What do the letters mean?

[helice]

Got to looking at my Lyman and Ideal moulds this evening and noticed that some of them had letters after the number and of coarse some don't. Here's what I got:
313226 no letters
311316 no letters
429421 no letters
429244 no letters

311334 BM
311466 AX I think its an X. Kind of a light strike and off center.

Maybe you guys could fill me in on what they mean? Are there a lot of different letter combinations? There are also a few extraneous numbers on these moulds. Do they have significance? So Keep writin' cause I'm learnin'. Helice

[NoZombies]

Usually the two letter suffix on the mold indicates the maker of the cherry that cut the mold.

'least, that's what I heard

The extra numbers are probably the mold number (each half probably has the same numbers on it) so you can keep the halves together.

[Uncle Grinch]

Great timing... I was looking at my new Lyman 311041 mould tonight and was wondering what the AV stands for after the mould number.

I've seen letters prefixing the mould number showing it to be undersized, hence "U".

[Charlie Sometimes]

The letters identify the cherry used- or so I have been told.
I guess they can track how many molds they cut with them before replacing them.
I would think they start out oversized, and end undersized throughout their life expectancy.

Not sure if they represent the maker- what would that get them?

Never heard that about the "U", but that makes sense.

[Dale53]

The"U" indicates "Undersize"...

Dale53

[NoZombies]

No idea why they used initials for the makers. If you look at old molds and new ones with the same numbers, you can find some that are very different bullets. The two things might be related?

Anyone know what W7 under the mold number means?

[Leftoverdj]

O is the prefix for oversized, just as U is the prefix for undersized, I've only seen them on the older moulds. Made good sense. A mould could be off specs and still be exactly what someone would want. A simple stamp could turn scrap into salable product.

Lyman has always changed designs at whim and without notice. We had a discussion about this sometime ago with collectors coming up with three and four clearly different bullets coming from moulds with the same designation. My example is 311410. The illustration in the Cast Bullet Handbook is flat base. My 40 year old mould is flat base. Current production is bevel base.

[Shiloh]

What Dale53 said. U for Undersized.

Not all undersized are marked like this though.

How many molds (Approx) is a cherry good for??

Shiloh