Few new moulds and an odd one...

Down to Kittery this evening with a few friends. They sell a lot of used reloading equipment, and tonight they had more moulds than I'd EVER seen before. Borrowed a set of dial calipers and settled down to go thru the pile.

Picked up a Lee 180gr 30 mould for $10, and was very thrilled to find a 2 cav RCBS 454424 brand new in the box for $35. Been looking for that one.

But the really interesting one I found was like nothing I'd ever seen. Its like somebody left a 310 tong tool and a single cavity Ideal mould in a room together to long and funky stuff happened.

It had Marlin marked on it, and it had a single cavity 405 grain 45-70 mould at the end, and the handles looked almost exactly like a 310 tong tool, except with no dies. I don't know if regular 310 dies would work or if they were something special as well.

It was neat, but I didn't think it was neat enough to warrant the $75 they were asking for it, so I passed. Anyone seen one of these before?

boots,
that sounds like the typical late-1800s reloading tool that Winchester marketed. It had a bullet mould on the end for casting the boolits, and then you could reload them with the tong-handle located dies. Without pics it's hard to say, but most of those were permanent/fixed for one caliber (unlike the 310 tools, which had removable dies), so some of the holes you saw, could have been the resizing "die", and if you saw something that looked like a hook with a spring, that might have been the set-up for decapping. A little nub on the inside of the handles was usually used for seating the new primer. The only projection which looked like a "die" would have been a cylinder that protruded out the side of the handle 90-degrees. I believe this is the seat/crimp station.

Anything that Winchester marketed, Marlin soon copied (with their own name and designations on it), so I'm betting it was a late 1880s to early 1910s Marlin reloading tool w/ mould.

Marlin and Ideal were part of the same company at one time IIRC.

What you describe is the typical reloading outfit if the late 19th century as 10mm says. Fairly common and they work okay too.

That was a combination tool for casting, sizing and loading all with the same tool. The ones marked Marlin aren't nearly as common as those marked Ideal, so more $$. While they are serviceable, they aren't great for casing or loading. These days, they're more of a colector's item.

Have seen them (like articles in various cals) with asking prices in excess of $100.00 Judging from E-Bay mold prices today, there are a lot of folks starting to just collect molds for collector sake.
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