OOC: what length barrel ?190 RCBS Silhouette .357 23.0 Lil'Gun CCI 400 Starline 2245 fps
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OOC: what length barrel ?190 RCBS Silhouette .357 23.0 Lil'Gun CCI 400 Starline 2245 fps
The fact that this cartridge works in a unmodified AR lower is the big selling point. Period. After that is 35 rem. performance. Meets straight wall restrictions. It’s not a magnum so ammo could be produced reasonably which still many do not reload. Helps promote the AR platform as a common gun with big game hunting potential. Some like a new cartridge for what ever reason and they should feel welcome. I won’t buy one because my waffle top Marlin 35 Remington is too sweet to get replaced.
Nice looking boolits! How do I put my name on the list to rent that mold?Originally Posted by Oldfeller
BB
Lets give the current holder some time to play. If it works great for him and he wants to keep it, he can make a contribution to the effort, keep the mold and I can make another one (incorporating any applicable lessons learned).
If he decides he has had enough fun with it, your "I want it" puts you next in line.
The "Rent" is only to give it an honest try, report results and be willing to ship it to the next user if applicable.
When the punch was made, the smallest expected final OD was 0.358".
Another nose punch would be pretty easy to fab up. However, with the size before and after coating, it may not be needed. A standard punch is probably ok as long as you do not get material extruding down around the end of the punch on the final sizing step.
If you had a way of chucking and spinning the existing punch, you could probably file it down enough to make it work. Have you put a mike on it to see how much material would need to be removed?
11:56 pm Update: Another nose punch was easy to fab up. Will work in a 0.3550" sizer.
Last edited by P Flados; 11-25-2019 at 12:58 AM.
This rig can take a .360-.363" raw dry lead bullet down to .3565" in a single fairly easy on the shoulder really long arcing power stroke.
...... makes the old girl shudder and groan a bit taking it all dry like that ......
Which is why I made the long arm up in the first place, the original arm was too short and it was beating me to death doing sizing operations on cases and bullets.
This is also why you might consider a smaller .356" to .357" pre-powder coating "as cast" size.
After powder coating, the old .357AR boys can shoot it as powder coated at circa .358 with no sizing needed --- and the 350 Legend boys can fairly easily size it with one sizing operation done post powder coating to .356" or .357" to suit their throats.
But nobody will need a jack the giant killer press arm going forward.
.... except mebbe me, I'm crip in both shoulders and have heart surgery scarring that chimes in on any heavy press operations.
Last edited by Oldfeller; 11-25-2019 at 06:32 AM.
All retired now, just growing tomatoes and building and shooting my guns.
Next Errant Thoughts ......
There is enough room in the new LEE double cavity molds to actually run 4 cavities into the block, issue is you would need a custom aluminum sprue plate to do that.
You can easily do 3 cavities using the stock LEE stamped steel sprue plate by intentionally moving the cavities off of sprue hole center such that the two outer cavities offset to outside of the mold block (one in each direction) such that the sprue hole itself barely falls inside the cavity hole on the outer two. This makes room in the middle for the 3rd cavity.
The Lee Sprue plate isn't hardened steel (very well annealed, actually) and the sprue plate can be drilled and chamfered by use of standard HSS bits and countersinks.
Take these last thoughts and twist them a little bit harder, and for a smaller caliber bullet you COULD manage to finagle four of them into a stock LEE sprue plate and block set.
...... and if you put your evil AR face mask on, you could make up a custom aluminum sprue plate that could put 4 cavities of up to 45 caliber size into the stock LEE block set.
This is "evil twisted face" because you would have to use the wet rag trick all the time while casting with it at full rate since it would run smokey hot all the time .....
Next, you can park an ice cube off to the side of your folded wet rag to use to chill the sprue plate itself by touching the tab to the ice cube. Run off from this keeps the larger rag wet longer, so that is a good thing too.
Final twisted thought for today ......
Your butt first pusher could incorporate a relatively short and small hollow point protrusion that could force the tip of the bullet nose into a more BC friendly flight form and would still permit expansion to initiate more quickly --- you got literally tons of force available to you when you first start doing a butt first resizing operation as the base is the most solid part of the bullet. So, swage that bullet tip intentionally as you size it.
This trick best applies to single operation butt first sizing of the cast bullets post-coated, which is kinda predicated off the body diameter shift to .356"-.357".
The "shiny zone" on your nose is your swaging zone where you can make these sorts of minor changes for free during a butt first sizing operation using a standard press.
Have I paid my rent yet?
Last edited by Oldfeller; 11-26-2019 at 05:45 AM.
All retired now, just growing tomatoes and building and shooting my guns.
Thank you. I am not in a hurry, it would be after spring turkey season before it would be warm enough for me to have extended range sessions.
BB
As far as any future 350L custom mold efforts, getting a mold to drop at 0.3560 to 0.3565 is probably ideal. I tend to want the target size to be a little big in case someone wants to try an alloy that drops a little smaller than what I use.
One of the biggest questions for a given user is what deciding on the ideal meplat size and how sharp are the meplat edges. For hunting, bigger and sharper is better. When is comes to AR-15 feeding and minimizing jams and nose damage, smaller and more rounded seem to be better.
Smaller / rounded is also better for BC which not only affects retained velocity but helps reduce wind drift at longer ranges. Many people thinking about 350L maximum effective range greatly underestimate how much wind drift will affect field accuracy.
Loner #1 meplat is on the small side and more rounded. If it feeds great with minimal damage, a user can start adjusting small batches by hand to see how much bigger / sharper he can go without causing problems.
I contemplated doing a 3 cavity for some 30 cal stuff, but never did it and I am not likely to try it any time soon.
For any new custom 350L molds I make up, it is a lot easier for me to cut two different sizes. Say 160 and 180 or 180 and 200. I can try to get two identical cavities but it is a lot of extra effort and I am not sure how good the results will be. Right now, the reamer that I used for the first Loner mold, has been modified to have a bigger / sharper meplat. I can grind it back to smaller and more rounded, but I do not want to regrind the reamer more than required.
I have a full set of 44 magnum bullets sitting in butter tubs that I have no gun to support now, so I will take them into the pot and turn them into 357AR bullets in some quantity.
Like you, I will likely not need anything different beyond that, I do not think.
Go ahead and collect Bikerbeans addy and forward it to me b y PM as permission to ship. I will likely be done with my trial inside a week as I will likely have run out of recycled 44 mag bullets by then.
If I experiment any with hollow pointing I will take some aluminum and make up a male member that goes inside the exposed ID of the LEE push through die, insert a powder coated bullet from the bottom (support it with a locked toggle action) and smack the top of the aluminum male member with a mallet to insta-swage the hollow point into the bullet on nearly perfect center.
A second trip bottom pushed completely through the sizer will remove any "upset effects" in the bullet body from getting swacked by a mallet.
....... isn't easily stopped by minor circumstances, you know.
Errant thought on trying to make two cavities match up perfectly weight-wise---- simply don't bother trying to do that.
Do the dot trick that you already do except do it post machining with a simple single lightly struck very small fine chisel line mark on the die nose tip (oriented 90 degrees to the parting line) so the cavities can be sorted easily after they are cast.
A small very lightly struck linear chisel mark 90 degrees to the mold parting line means no noticeable drag effect on releasing the cast bullets from the mold halves .....
I bet the weight variation between the cavities gets swallowed up by the normal casting variation due to mold closure (added in with the natural powder coating weight variation) ...... i.e. it may not a deal killer anyway.
But if it is, simply keeping like with like will take care of it, easy peasy.
Last edited by Oldfeller; 11-26-2019 at 03:55 PM.
All retired now, just growing tomatoes and building and shooting my guns.
Thanks guys. I have a bolt gun so I will only need to cast a couple hundred boolits. I should be ready to ship the mold out within a week of receiving it.
BB
We may want to consider just sending you some boolits at this point.
That would be fine. I can size and PC them. I can send the caster some lead alloy in exchange.
BB
I have melted up all my ice cream and potato salad tubs full of 44 magnum bullets.
Now my lead is all reformed and resting easy, once sized already in the form of 180 grain and 205 grain 357AR bullets thanks to the generosity of P Flados.
My wife drove over to the family homestead in Raleigh, NC to help her sisters cook Thanksgiving two days ago and I only had a 7x9 garage door to paint as my entire honey do list. So, instead I had me a plumb wonderful casting marathon very carefully interspersed with letting some paint dry between coats and sizing up a bunch of bullets, very carefully done such that my back is actually in pretty good shape for going to Thanksgiving.
Errant Thought -- shipping lead back and forth is quite heavy and can be quite expensive, while the mold only ships once for the same range of price as a flatpack mailer.
P Flados, what do you say? I have the mold all cleaned up, over-boxed & properly in bubble wrapped and am ready to pop an address on the box and let it fly to the next user. Heck, I even straightened out the LEE box so it looks like a box again.
........... ya think I got enough boolits?
The white powder in all the gouge marks and under the sprue plate & pivot pin and dusted in the cavities is Hexagonal Boron Nitride, a heat proof dry lube that is sold to gun guys as a bullet and barrel conditioner. And as Mold Release (commercially). Women know it as a component (about 10% by volume) of Johnson's Baby Powder, and it is used in all their their cosmetics to make it feel soft to their touch.
The mold is in the box ready to pre-heat and cast -- just leave the dusting of powder in the cavities and go to casting with an easy drop free release.
The nose first pusher pin is trapped in the rubber band that is holding the cavities shut so they won't get beat up in shipping from vibration over the miles.
Last edited by Oldfeller; 11-27-2019 at 01:35 PM.
All retired now, just growing tomatoes and building and shooting my guns.
I shipped the mold in a medium flat rate box for about $12 or so.
The advantage of shipping boolits is that it actually cost me less. 400 boolits in the small flat rate box was less than $8 at the same time.
I am not sure what mold postage will be on a user supplied box.
I am good with whatever, I just want us to collectively spend more on actual goods (lead, blank molds, etc) and as little as possible on shipping.
I do not want to "make money" with any of this. I also want anybody else involved to contribute something of value to the collective testing effort. I still have a stash of "as cast" boolits from the loner mold sitting around. They can not be purchased, but I can contribute them to the testing effort. The tester may want to contribute to the effort by supplying a blank mold (shipped to me), buying lead (shipped to the boolit supplier) or mailing lead from a personal stash.
If someone does want me to make a custom mold, a purchase of two blank molds (sent to me) or an equivalent $ value of lead seems reasonable. This would cover my effort for the mold & nose punch along with shipping cost.
Oldfeller, you need to do some shooting before you let go of the mold. If your gun loves the 200s and hates the 180s, having the mold would allow for the needed "conversion". If desired, it should run fine in single cavity mode.
On another note, my memory is fading. I can not remember how I made the loner punch. Some of my recent nose punches have been two parts lightly press fit together. If so, it can be separated and the OD adjusted while spinning the punch in a drill.
I checked in my Prepaid Mailer pile, and sure enough I got a medium box, so I put the mold in that box instead.
My feeble math sez it is $12 to ship the mold on to the next guy, $8 to ship the bullets to Bikerbeans, $8 for him to ship the lead to you. $12 vs $16. We as a group save $4 in total shipping the mold.
I got approaching thousands of each kind of bullet, so I got plenty enough to try out very very thoroughly.
Did you start with bare blank blocks from LEE or did you buy a smaller bullet mold on sale or discounted from one of the bigger distributors?
Buying smaller sized bullet molds and reaming them out could save some money because LEE has a fairly big opinion of buying any molds (or blank molds) directly from them. Retail list price, as I remember.
Plus the distributor supplied ones come with a pilot hole already in place.
........ oh Amazon, I can hear you calling -- across the vales and over the briny storm tossed sea ......
Last edited by Oldfeller; 11-27-2019 at 08:10 PM.
All retired now, just growing tomatoes and building and shooting my guns.
I know how to work with molds originally for smaller boolits, but disassembly can be a pain.
Titan sells the blanks for less than Lee, and they are good to work with. And do not forget to click on the Titan banner at the top of these pages when shopping. The forum gets a small kickback.
Right now, I have 2 untouched blanks. Anytime I order from Titan, I consider stocking up on items to save shipping.
Do the Titan molds come with the cavity alignment pins and bushings set up already?
Reason I ask is the picture they show does not have any alignment pins and bushings at all.
Hopefully, it is just a bad graphic of an existing mold with the face all blanked out.
PM me an address so I can have Titan send you a care package as a thank you. Please do not start working on anything until we know what we are shooting for.
I am reminded of the early craze phase of Moly as a bullet lubricant ---- I built up a high BC cast 7mm mold that was moly tumbled for its lubrication function. It was shot over a oatmeal/moly buffer material at full rifle velocity and the accuracy of it simply sucked beyond belief. I made up some cast samples from pure tin (for lightness as the stock HBC slug weighed 195 grains) and sent Waksupi some to shoot. He says he found a few of them once the snow melted, they had bent into horseshoe curves in the air and NEVER ARRIVED AT THE TARGET BACKING BOARD.
I still have that mold, BTW, and the bolt I annealed to cut the push through sizer into. That was nearly 20 years ago I do believe. If I could find the box or sack with them in it, I have lots of mold parts and some single cavity blanks lying around.
I also have a number of old LEE molds in a box somewhere that folks had sent me over the years because they bought better molds for them to actually use and they had sent the old ones to me and said "build something useful out of it, I don't want it any more". Generally speaking, they had attempted some lapping mods that had gone wrong size-wise and what they sent was mostly bunged up junk, but it was usable for a larger bullet form.
When we started out, you had limited LEE offerings using the roll pin alignment method, Lyman molds and relatively few RCBS bullet molds.
I once challenged the list to send me a really bunged up LEE mold and I would do a sticky on how to fix it.
I bet I can still find that tread somewhere here on the list, it was Waksupi that sent me a much used hammer smacked totally crapped out 35 Whelen mold off a very very early group buy.
Yep, it is still here --- they had made it a sticky no less. I punched "wobbly goblin" into search and it popped right up.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...ture-diameters
Last edited by Oldfeller; 11-28-2019 at 07:10 AM.
All retired now, just growing tomatoes and building and shooting my guns.
The photo of the Lee blank is out of date. What you get is the current style.
Hold off on sending anything to me for now. I have no "needs" at the moment, and as I am recuperating from shoulder surgery, any new toys would probably tempt me to do something that I shouldn't.
P Flados, what has been the outcome with this mold in the 357AR? How has it been shooting for the others that have tried it?
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