Recently I purchased ( at a gun show in Birmingham ) an IDEAL bullet mold.
It is a single cav. mold. It is the 356402, a trucanted cone design weighing 125 grs., plain based.
The mold has a very slight " ripple " on the nose which has absolutely nothing to do with it's ability to shoot accurately. I only paid $20 ( out the door, no tax ) for the mold. I wonder if a chip was spun around the nose by the cherrie when the mold was cut ? I once read that some people had the ability to purchase rejects out the " back door " from Lyman ? ? In the photo below, I'm using a flat nose punch on my Lyman 45, so what you see on the nose isn't from an improper fitting nose punch.
The mold cast large enough that the bullet sizes nice and round to .3575".
What is unique about the mold is that today's Lyman 356402 doesn't offer a crimp shoulder on their bullet design .........my version does.
The crimp ring feature allows this one bullet to be used in the 357 mag, 38 Spec., 380 Auto, 9 mm Luger, 38 Super, 357 sig, etc.
A pretty versatile bullet that could be pressed into service in several different calibers.
Yesterday, I fired up the pot and cast a few. This morning, I lubed and sized them to .3575 ".
Ben