Any Custom Mold Makers Capable of a .273"ish Cruise Missile Copy

[Z.F.Bowles]

I understand tooling limitations and that most are geared up for larger bore bullets and that's what most cast boolit shooters are using. But my 1918 Carcano needs a .271" boolit and the Lee Cruise Missile Molds drops a .269"er. Anyone know a custom mold maker that can make a .273" or so, depending on alloy, copy of the Lee Cruise missile so that I can size it down consistently to .271"?

[NoZombies]

Look up "beagling" a mold on this site, and see how that does before spending the money on a custom mold.

[kokomokid]

Accurate says he will cut as small as .260 bottom of lube groove. He has a lot of designs people have thought up. All moulds (brass) he has cut me have been very good.

[Z.F.Bowles]

Would the lube grooves be too shallow? Only .010"? I've read lots of good things about Accurate so if he could make it that'd be great. The lands are about .258" IIRC. Grooves are .270".

[Conditor22]

Forget the lube grooves, PC (powder coat) the boolits and gain .002 to .005 in diameter depending on PC and forget that sticky/smokey lube.
PC coats the lead, adds to the diameter, works as a lube and looks purdy. Using different colors is a way to differentiate loads/powder charges.

Beagling a mold causes the boolit to not be concentric/round

[NoZombies]

Beagling a mold causes the boolit to not be concentric/round

It depends on the mold. I've got a lot of factory molds that aren't perfectly round. Generally beagling a mold won't make it any worse than many of the factory Lee molds I've seen. Heck, I've had Beagling a mold produce more round bullets than the mold did before the beagling.

[Z.F.Bowles]

Interesting. I hadn't considered powder coat. So if I had a mold made without the lube grooves with powder coat in mind, what size do the bullets need to be with a .270" groove to groove diameter barrel?

[P Flados]

I have made some NLG molds.

The closest thing to what you seem to be interested is a 180 / 200 in 35 cal:





For a PC application, a mold ID real close to the final desired diameter allows about the right amount of sizing after the PC.

For PC boolits, anything from sizing to groove to sizing to groove + 0.002" seems to work pretty good.