Hi all, I loaded some 440 Lee's and plinked them last night. I'm waiting on gas checks, so I just finger lubed some, stuffed into cases so they would go bang.
I was looking through my pile of molds wondering if I could size the Lee .514" 500 down to .502.(don't think so) when I saw my 50 cal Lee REAL muzzle loader mold. The bullets drop at .501" and 360gns. They are a hollow base, so I don't know if I will need to keep the pressure down??
Any thoughts here?

I don't recall how I ended up with one, but I have one of the 50 cal real molds, though I think it is plainbased. I was thinking since the driving bands are so narrow, I should be able to size them .476" for my 480. Well, I was partially correct, they did size down easily enough, but the bands didn't size concentrically with the bullet. Accuracy wasn't as bad as I'd expected given the off center driving bands.

I think if you stick with mild loads, it should work fine, mild as in 700-800 fps. A neat thing about the tapered nose on the real bullet is it really tears up the paper on a target.

PaulH....I did the exact same thing. However, I didn't fire any, as none of them "looked" the same on the outside after sizing.
The GG ended up "wavy", and "droopy" (~~~~~), if ya know what I mean.....it's hard to explain.

Russ

Yep, they definately looked funny, but I shot em anyhow, I figured at worst I'd just have to scrub out the bore a bit more. They shot much better than I'd expected, though not as well as I would have liked.

I still have your samples boxed up and ready to ship, and I might even manage to get them out to the post office this week.