I know this has been done before. But I've been wanting to cut down a Lee 515 450 mold for bullets to use in my .50-45 rolling blick carbine. I have a Rapine 350 and a Lyman 515139 mold and they work well. But not being one to leave well enough alone, I decided to give it a try. The Lee molds were cheap, so I ordered two. Its always good to have a spare 

I machined .175" off the base (one band and one lube groove). I had to shorten the sprue plate screw a little, but no other work was needed. The handles on these molds are permenently attached with pressed in pins. You can see in the photo that I machined down far enough to skim the top of the pins. But I don't expect it to be a problem. Here is the machined mold next to the unmodified mold.
I expect this will drop the weight down from 450 to around 350gr. I'll find out this weekend when the lead pot gets fired up.

Yes, it is a left hand thread. Lee changed to LH screws about 5 years ago. In the top view photo above, the unmodified mold is marked "LH 515 450". The LH means Left Hand screw. If a mold is not marked LH, then it should have a right hand threaded screw.

CW wrote on Aug 21^st, 2020 at 9:37am:



Its basically a shortened .50-70.  Its a nice size for a light carbine. Here is a video of me shooting it after I welded up and re-machined the extractor stud. 

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I loaded up 20 rounds of .50-45 with the new 350gr bullets from the cut down mold. I hope to get to the range this weekend. I think they will work well.