310 round ball

[yip]

  whats going on about molds and and round balls?  looking for 310 round in a box or a mold, seems everyone is buying them all up. any help would be great.

[Daryl]

yip- I had 2 moulds for my .32, a .311 DC Lee and later bought a .319" DC Lee.
If you would like, simply PM me a complete mailing address and I will gift you the .311 DC mould.

best wishes

edited - it you would rather have the .319" mould, which casts .320" in both cavities with pure lead, just say so.
I found this one to load almost identically as the .311" - certainly no more difficult as the little balls flow easily to mould into the rifling
with a substantial patch.

[Mike from OK]

  whats going on about molds and and round balls?  looking for 310 round in a box or a mold, seems everyone is buying them all up. any help would be great.

Lee has a statement on their website...

It says they've experienced unprecedented demand which wiped out their inventory and they have a 119 day backlog of orders that are being filled in the order they were received. They've hired extra personnel, they're working overtime, and even office personnel have been redirected to assemble and ship product.

That statement has been up there for a while... So I dont know if they've made a dent in the backlog or not... I would consider Track of the Wolf to be one of the more prominent retailers of BP merchandise and they are still out of RB molds... So who knows.

Mike

[hanshi]

When demand gets really high suppliers will do their best to fill that demand, barring unexpected problems.  No one wants to lose money they don't have to lose.  But unfortunately extraordinary conditions often result in more "lag time" than we care to experience.

[Daryl]

There is a (used).311" DC Lee mould on it's way to yip.

[yip]

  THANKS DARYL YOU GUYS ARE GREAT!

[Daryl]

You are most welcome, yip.

[yip]

  Daryl; i received the mold today (March 8th) thank you sir, are you sure i don't owe you anything? i can't wait to try it out, very nice of you thanks again.

[Daryl]

You are most welcome. That's all the thanks I need. 

[hanshi]

Starting off with the .32 caliber I bought a .311" Lee DC mold many years ago.  For some time I've been thinking about a couple of rifles that might benefit from a .005" larger ball.  But that's a wait & see for now.  In the past a .490" ball suited very well until I got a .016" groove rb Rice barrel in .50 and a .32 rb Rice.  Long, long ago I picked up a Lyman .445" mold which loads and shoots about the same as the .440" in my rifle.  The shortage can't last forever!

[Daryl]

I hear, you hanshi.  The .311" was the firs tone I bought and shot for a while. I was using the mattress ticking we'd found that measured .0235" compressed in my calipers.
It was down to about .020" in the mic. The little balls loaded very easily, even thought he barrel had very narrow grooves and wide lands- opposite what many (including me) like.
It shot OK, but that's it, about 1" at 50 yards for 5 shots.  I could not get it to shoot tighter.
I bought another Lee Mould, casting .320"x.320". It was their .319" mould. These seemed to load almost identically and they literally shot the same 1" groups from a rest at 50yards.
So - if I ever get another .32" I won't waste my time with the smaller balls as I no longer have that mould.   The larger balls have the potential to shoot better and that is good enough
for me.