What molds do you buy?

[hornady]

I know everyone has his favorite, over the years I have settled in with the Lyman, I have at one time or another had one made by just about all the manufacturers, last count its 7 Lyman, one RCBS and one Lee. The Lee is a 50 Cal maxi. I’ve down sized from a ridicules number of molds,
I use the Lyman 450, and the Lyman and RCBS molds seem to work best in the 450. Over the years I have had several of the Lee molds in standard and T/L design. And they have been very accurate. I just never cared for the mess of T/L, and the standard Lee bullets never held enough lube for my liking.
Lee has done more to bring guys into casting than any other company, with their low prices, and I have bought Lee molds to test a Bullet, before buying the more expensive Lyman or RCBS mold in the same basic design and weight.
But what is your top keeper by manufacturer in molds.

[Reverend Recoil]

For pistol the Lee six cavity molds are hard to beat for cost and quantity of production.  I purchase Lee rifle molds for reaming them to produce smooth paper patched bullets.  I make the D-reamers from grade-8 bolts and shape them with a drill press, file, and bench grinder.  All my Lyman rifle molds make good bullets.  I have one Saeco rifle mold.  It is of very high quality.  I don't have any RCBS molds but I have heard nothing but good things about them.

[calvon]

LBT, first, last, and always.

[Richard P]

There is no question that LBT will make you a good mould. For general use RCBS moulds make good bullets and last many years.  For ''just plinkers'' bullets the Lee TL styles are good, esp if you can get a 6-cav.
   It takes a while to learn Lee moulds. Close them carefully and take care not to gall them. The 6-cav take a while to warm so fill only two cavities at first.  As it warms you can fill more. When it is hot, take care to let it cool enough that you dont tear the bases or let the sprue plate cause bumps on bases by not cutting smoothly
  One of the best things to do on any of them is NOT hit the sprue plate. Use a welder's glove to cut sprues. They will cut easily when the mould is up to temperature.
   With that said, I think Saeco has the best handles. 

[.22-5-40]

I have custom nose-pour moulds from Fred Leeth at Pioneer products..Toolroom quality...Only mould that let me equal best jacketed match bullet accuracy out of a .22 Hornet and .222Rem.  Aside from these..I also like some of the original Ideal moulds..surprising how accurate some of these 100 year old moulds are.

[Tom W.]

I have a lot of Lee and a lot of RCBS molds. I had one Lyman but didn't much care for it, so it got traded..

[D Crockett]

I started with lee moulds for  the black powder guns so when I started to cast for my pistols I thought I would buy lee 6 cavity moulds bought 9 of them with in a year they were all gone got tired of them breaking and galding on top of the mould not knocking lee but they were just not for me then I got a magma master caster with some magma moulds and a Ideal mould that was 9 years ago and I still have them and making very good bullets with them D Crockett

[Graybeard]

I have more Lyman than any other brand but like RCBS moulds better than Lyman. I don't however like two cavity moulds and that's all RCBS makes so I don't have as many of them as I would if they were four cavity. I have some by Lee and some by LBT as well. I tried some SAECO and sure didn't care for those.

[hornady]

Just like reloading presses, it runs the gantlet on preference, it was mentioned about the galling of Lee molds, I never used it on the Lee, but I use Bull plate Lube on my Molds. That stuff is great. After reading some post, I have been using Kroil in the mold cavity as well. You must use both sparingly, but both have made life simpler. I also had a Saeco .358 mold, I liked the bullet it dropped, but the sprue plate hole was much smaller than other molds. It gave me trouble with the bottom pour pot, I thought about opening the hole up. But it was one of those molds no matter what I did to it, bullets hung up in the mold. Seemed like I needed to hit the hinge 3 or 4 times to get the bullets to dropout. But you can get a stubborn mold from anyone.

[Nobade]

I will admit I have never gotten one from Veral, but I have quite a few from BRP, Accurate moulds, Mountain Moulds, Night Owl, and the other regulars like Ideal and Lyman. There are quite a few new mould makers coming on the scene with great designs and very high quality. It is a very good time to be a caster from that regard, with quality as good or better than ever before and the ability to specify exactly what you want. Unfortunately the continued availability of lead to cast with is iffy, but at least we'll have nice moulds!

[hornady]

Over the winter cabin fever set in pretty good and I went a little over board on lead and alloy. We had a couple warm spells and I finally got the multiple buckets mixed and poured into ingots. I got tried of moving them ever time I needed something in the Garage.
But I do see where lead is drying up; I built a bullet trap last summer, now I can just keep recycling the range lead.

[Nobade]

A bullet trap is a very good idea, especially for people who live where large quantities of lead are hard to get. If I had my own range it certainly would have a catch box.

[res45]

I have about ten Lee's and two old Lyman molds I bought at a sale for $25 each with handles.  They all have cast great bullets and have had no issues with any of them.

[huntducks]

At one time I had about 50+ molds R&P but when ebay went crazy 2 years ago I decided to cash in but first I went on a casting binge for a good 2mo I casted bullets i'll bet I made 10,000 then I sold every H&G mold I had (14) some brought as much as $260 I also got rid of some custom 10 cav. I had just to darn heavy and a number of Lyman 4 cav. and single HP now i'm down to 15 molds all pistols and 2- 30 cal 100gr and 115gr RN for my carbines and 1 84gr for a 25-20.

IMHO lee makes a good mold for the $$$ I think I have 6 then 2 RCBS which are excelent molds and the rest Lyman which are good molds but not as good as RCBS.

[Old Fart]

For my needs Lee pretty well covers me. I've had some of the nicer/expensive molds over the years and they all cast nice bullets. I've not had any problems casting nice bullets with them. It's just these days I like having something  I can replace quick and inexpensively. I've gotten to where I actually like the tumble lube. I thin the alox a little with mineral spirits and it's not been as messy. I don't remember where I heard about this but it  cleans right up, not the normal old sticky fingers I used to get.

[stubshaft]

Mihec, LBT, NOE and older discontinued Ideal/Lymans.

[Lloyd Smale]

lyman are at the bottom of the heap when it comes to steel molds. Im talking there 2 cav molds. there 4 cav molds are excellent molds. I wont buy anymore of there 2 cav junk.  Im not a big fan of aluminum molds there just to easy to damage when casting unless you baby them. To me the cadilac of molds are the ballistic cast molds. There simular in price to lbts and are a work of art! There a mold you can buy and hand down to your grandchildren. Saeco molds are well built. At least the old ones were buy bullet designs left something lacking. Lee 2 cav are junk and i woudnt waste another penny on one. There six cav molds are much better and worth the money. Again though lees bullets designs are far from my favorites. Only three factory bullet designs i even fool with from lee are there  .38 105 swc and 150rf and there 400 grain 475 mold.

[bilmac]

I use a mold release from Midway on all my molds so I have never had any galling problems with Lee molds. Their 6 holers are the only way to go as far as I'm concerned. I have run into a Lee bullet design or two that wouldn't shoot in my guns, so if a guy was the careful type he could buy a very low cost single cavity and see if the bullet works before spending the money for the real thing, but I usually just take a chance.

 The only disappointment with Lee 6 holers is that the lead pot gets empty so fast. I spend way more time heating lead than casting bullets now days.

[bagdadjoe]

I have an LBT card in my wallet....