Buckshot mold

Disclaimer .. I do not nor have I ever loaded shot shells .

So a guy at the club asked me to make him a buckshot mold .
Well what he asked for is a down an dirty quicky mold to cast enough ball for a couple boxes of buckshot a year .

I can give him exactly what he wants pretty darn easy .
But if I can do better why not .

So i have a couple simple questions .

So how important is ball size and roundness for good results in a load ?
For example if ball size and roundness is plus or minus .005 or so to nominal .33 for 00 buck is that plenty good enough ?

And for the extremely low volume wanted would you rather have single balls with a sprue to nip or linked balls with a sprue ?

I've never measured each ball for buckshot loads so I would think 5/1000's would be close enough. If you do it like split shot the a gang mold where you nip the sprue off would be faster but would leave a burr on each pellet that might need to be tumbled to smooth out.

I have a single cavity .32 caliber RB mold that sat on the shelf at the LGS for 30 years. I had looked at it so many times the shop owner asked 'if I was ever going to buy and not just look at it. I paid the $12.00 price. I use it when I am slowing down casting cadence by using 2 molds. It wasn't long before I had a tuna can full, plenty for how seldom I load and shoot buck shot. .32/.33 should be fine.

Please don't make offers to purchase a mold in this thread.

I would want balls with a common sprue. That way you would have one sprue cut per ball. Interlinked would have 2. There is a mold on the market that has cavities on the top and bottom.

Thank you sirs .

Being a bit ignorant when it comes to loading shot shells I wasn't sure what a guy expected when it came to buckshot .
I like to do as good a job as I can on everything I do , but sometimes you have to know when to say that's good enough

Keep in mind it's a shot gun not a rifle.

It was suggested to me to not cut the sprues on my linked #4 cast buckshot so I didn't. I saw no difference in width of patterning with all separate buckshot or with them still connected. But the connected shot made some strange holes on the paper. But a 1" wide slash would be more effective than a single hole I would think. I didn't get much further than that.

I started on a mold this morning and made a bone headed blunder , the observant ones will catch it right away .
No big deal I can fix it in cad with about 3 mouse clicks .

I don't have a ball mill the right size so I 3d milled out the pockets , I think the surface finish is a lot better this way but we shall have to wait and see how round things are .

Attachment 278020

the alignment pin.

neat looking blocks though.

good luck!

Yep , forgot to mirror the drawing before doing the cam and hitting the green button . at least I caught it before finishing that half .

How are you going to get lead in the mold or is it not done yet?

Its not done yet , I'll do the sprue holes last with the halves clamped together .

Well cut one that will match the other half , I like it , and good work hope to see you as a custom mold maker on here hopefully .

I use a .311 round ball two cavity Lee mold. Takes a while but it works. 12 ga, 9 balls in a WW white wad works well for me out to 25 yards.

Thanks :)

I have no plans on becoming a mold maker though . this is just a fun little project .
I'm going to finish it up Tomarow afternoon , I am anticipating seeing how the cavities come out , I have some suspicions that the shot is going to come out slightly elliptical .
I think I might have to use a different tool path to get things round

Finished up the mold today , it looks good :)
I ran out of time before I could get the lead pot out and heated up so Monday morning I'll heat it up and see if I get round balls out of it .
I'll take a few pics then .

Ran a few pours threw the mold , once it got hot it worked just fine .
Balls are close to size averaging .328 or so .
Once the mold got hot enough to frost the balls the sprues starting breaking off on their own and some of the sticks broke apart .
But the frosty balls ( lmao ) measured right on .330

The fellow I made the mold for is happy , it'll make a pile of shot quickly and there's plenty of room between each ball to nip them off for tumbling .

If I make another mold I'll probably make a few teensy changes .
3 balls on each stick , a little bit smaller connecting hole and make the cavities a bit closer together to load without breaking them apart .
In other words .. Just like the lee molds ;)

I'm happy though , it was a fun project .

Attachment 278348

Once you get casting at a good enough clip to get HOT frosted balls, once you drop them roll them with you mallet and if you dropped them hot enough they will break apart leaving almost no sprues.