Need hollow point attachment for mold

[Fishoot]

I did it again. I bid on an item that was not as good a deal as I thought. Don't worry, I will probably do it again. This time it was a Lyman 457122AV single cavity mold. Has anyone made a replacement hollow pointer for a mold? It looks fairly simple, but I thought I would ask. Also, can anyone provide me with a pic of theirs for me to make one?

[redhawk0]

You might want to check with these guys. See what they might have that could help.

https://hollowpointmold.com/

redhawk

[20:1]

I normally pass on molds without their hollowpoint stems because they're so expensive to have made, often exceeding the value of a complete mould by a large margin. With two-way shipping and everything, the last Lyman stem I had made was right at a hundred dollars. You can do better yourself if you have machine tools, most of the stems seem to be made on a mill.

And I "accumulate" HP moulds!

[turtlezx]

if you only need a few for hunting make the hp on a drill press poi shouldnt change

[M-Tecs]

Give Lyman a call.

[AnthonyB]

If you have a hand drill, a file, and a brass rod you can make your own.
PM me and I can help.
Tony

[pworley1]

I make mine out of drill bits. Find the bit that just fits the hole in your mold. Chuck it up backwards in a drill and file the solid tip to the profile you want. Turn the bit around and drill it into a piece of wood to the length you need it with the new point sticking out. Friction will keep the drill in the wood.

[MT Gianni]

Get some cabinet pulls from a hardware store for the wood and build a pin from a drill bit that fits the mold hole. You can make an adjustable or fixed depth adjustment with a key to keep the pin in place while you cast.

[Bent Ramrod]

It’s always happy time for me when I find a HP (or HB) mould for sale without the pin. Means I can sneer at the price asked for the “useless” remainder, get it for cheep, and then make one better suited to my shooting needs. Typically, blowing up water-filled cans and PET bottles, so I make the pin as wide and long as I can. On the pinless 457122 I found, I drilled the pin channel out to the oldtime original diameter where the hollow point fits a .22 RF blank. I may have wasted my time there, but I was curious.

As mentioned, check the pin channel with drill shanks to get close (at least) and then sneak up on the closest fit possible. Gauge pins are even better, if you have access. I start with 3/8” or 1/2” mild steel rod, turn the pin on the lathe (checking fit with the mould blocks), leave a flange sufficient to catch the stop screw on the mould, and turn a shank smaller than the flange to a standard drill size; say, 1/4”.

Make sure the business end of the pin is polished as smooth as possible, and that there is a tiny amount of “draft” or taper from bottom to top of the part that sticks into the mould cavity. Part the piece off, get (or make) a wood knob or handle with a hole drilled to fit the shank and file a section of the flange off so you can twist and pull the pin out of the mould. Push the shank into the knob, drill a hole for a crosspin and drive it in.

I find if I hold the business end in a torch flame till it turns blue and quench in oil, the pin has less of a tendency to be hard to pull out of the casting. Analogous, I guess, to the heat cycling of a new mould to break it in. You can also hold it in the molten lead to the same end, although you will need to wipe off attached lead for a while. I cast, wait for solidification, twist the pin and pull it out, and then cut off the sprue. My replacement pins are all tight enough fits so if I cut the sprue first, the casting just rotates in the mould, and I have to melt it off the end of the pin.

Typically, pins in intact moulds are numbered to the mould, no doubt made for that particular example. If Lyman offers a replacement service, I would imagine you’d have to send the blocks in for custom fitting, which would cost. I’ve found a couple loose pins at gun shows, and the fit of them in any of the HP moulds I have is sloppy, at best.

[farmbif]

lots of good instruction here if you are handy

[deltaenterprizes]

I have made a couple for members here.
I bought the last one on EBay and I had to make a shim because it didn’t fit exactly.

[6.5 swede]

I just finished this one, like 20:1 said they are time consuming and not cost effective if you have to have someone else machine one. This one is a hollow base plug.

[Fishoot]

As usual, you guys bailed me out. I will most likely follow Bent Ramrod's advice. I have a lathe and had envisioned using it to make the part. Lyman wanted $35 to make one. I am way too cheap for that! I suppose the screw in the bottom of the mold is to retain a ring fixed to the point making part. I can do that too.
By the way Bent Ramrod, is that .22 blank for making an expansion starter in the nose of the bullet? Sounds kind of fun!

[20:1]

As usual, you guys bailed me out. I will most likely follow Bent Ramrod's advice. I have a lathe and had envisioned using it to make the part. Lyman wanted $35 to make one. I am way too cheap for that! I suppose the screw in the bottom of the mold is to retain a ring fixed to the point making part. I can do that too.
By the way Bent Ramrod, is that .22 blank for making an expansion starter in the nose of the bullet? Sounds kind of fun!

$35.00 is cheap. For background, the first time I needed one I contacted Lyman and they told me they didn't offer that service any longer and I should just buy a new mold. This led me to hollow point mold service, who wants $85.00 plus shipping both ways, that's the "over $100.00" number I mentioned earlier. I only did that twice, and it inflated my cost of the moulds past their values. I have a very early 358429HP that I bought without a stem and although I have other resources now with machine shops I'll contact Lyman and see if they can provide a correct stem assy to preserve the old molds value. I recently bought an orphan stem on ebay just to get the correct wooden knob for it. I appreciate you sharing this with us.

[Bent Ramrod]

So far I haven't seen much difference between the performance of the ones with blanks and the empty hollow points. I was, of course, hoping to see the result "The Jackal" got on that watermelon in The Day Of The Jackal only on water-filled PET bottles, but the empty large hollow point is half that good at least, and the blank seems to make no difference. The Magic of Hollywood strikes again, (*sigh*).

An out-of-the-box engineer named George Huebner, working at Lyman, reportedly was experimenting with making a sort of Ness-type hollow point in .30 caliber moulds in the 60s. This was big enough to fit a Lyman .22 gas check into the end. Huebner would fill the cavity with water and press the check in. According to the writer in GunSport ("The Practical Gun Magazine"), these were legal for use in the field, highly "explosive" on impact, and allowed Huebner to go chuck hunting at short ranges with his Winchester .30-30. Another thing I need to try some day, if I can find another pinless mould; obviously, Lyman never brought it out as a commercial offering.

There was a correspondent in Shooting and Fishing who broke open a stick of dynamite and stuffed the loose powder into his hollow point boolits. He was delighted with the performance of the first two shots, and then there was a funny noise in the barrel on the third. The barrel was discovered to be somewhat bulged, and he advised the readership not to try this. I am certainly going to take his advice.

If you don't want to turn the flange, a hole drilled in the side like 6.5 swede illustrates, with a pin driven in, will also work. You file the lower edge of the pin for a tight sliding fit against the underside of the stop screw on the bottom of the mould. I like to make stuff like that anyway, so I don't send them out.

[M-Tecs]

There was a correspondent in Shooting and Fishing who broke open a stick of dynamite and stuffed the loose powder into his hollow point boolits. He was delighted with the performance of the first two shots, and then there was a funny noise in the barrel on the third. The barrel was discovered to be somewhat bulged, and he advised the readership not to try this. I am certainly going to take his advice.
.

I've often wondered if the sticks are still hand packed? My dad was a certified blaster.

[Bent Ramrod]

At our plant, the shells were packed by a machine that drove wooden rods with hard-rubber tips up and down. The operators used wooden shovels to shovel the loose powder into a wide trough that sloped down to a series of holes. The sticks would clatter up and down, packing the paper shells below as the powder slid down the trough into the holes. It was low-tech enough so it could have been done in the 1890s.

The big 23G shells were packed by hand. Literally. The workers pushed and punched handfuls of the stuff into them. They wore cotton gloves.

There were “Dynamite Guns” on some warships during the Spanish-American War, but they ran on compressed air. The gunpowder impulse is too strong.