rifled slug mold

[randyt]

Hello folks , I'm a new member here and stumbled across something on the net about a rifled slug mold or lack thereof. I have several old handmade molds from the thirties and forties. In with these molds is a rifled slug mold, figured I would post a couple photos of it for casual interest of historical reasons. It certainly wouldn't be a fast operation, here they are.

[richhodg66]

Welcome to the forum. Very interesting pieces there, thanks for posting.

[melloairman]

Welcome to the forum . Interesting tools for sure . Were you the maker of the tools ? Marvin

[randyt]

thanks for the comments. I am not the maker, the maker has been gone since the mid 1950s. He was a friend of my father and the molds came to me from my father. The mold shown in the back left hand side of the photo is a 50 caliber mold for a 50-110 wichester that had belonged to the maker and then my father and now me.

[NyFirefighter357]

Welcome and thank you, you have some pretty interesting stuff. Jason

[longbow]

Indeed, welcome and thanks for posting.

I have pictures of moulds made in Russia that are very similar except they are not rifled. Same kind of mould design in multiple pieces but for slugs similar to the Lyman sabot slug (big air gun pellet design).

They must be tedious to use but the are fairly simple to make and work. In this case, you could not cast a slug with rifling in a conventional split mould so a "push out" mould is the only option. Very interesting. I have to wonder why there are no commercial versions since several people have commented that they would like to cast rifled slugs. Maybe using the mould would convince them it is not worth it...

Longbow

[Bent Ramrod]

Very nice collection. You even have the cherries the old time workman used to cut some of the mould cavities. Never seen mould blocks attached to hinges before, but no reason it wouldn't work.

Wonder how he cut the rifling into that mould. Lyman had a mould that cast a hollow base slug and then used a swage die to engrave the rifling.

Thanks for sharing!

[randyt]

thanks for the comments. The best I can tell the rifling was made by filing grooves in the aluminum cylinder. I have some more cherries around here. He used ball bearing to make round ball cherries. A couple of the cherries in the photo are made from ball bearings.

[flint45]

Welcome very cool pics very interesting how they were made.