Quadcutter Molds

[Good Cheer]

Has there ever been a source for quadcutter molds?

[Carrier]

What’s a quadcutter?

[Michael J. Spangler]

Yeah good question

[dg31872]

Four cavity wadcutter?

[pettypace]

Maybe "quadcutter" is the technical term for the little coolie-hat-shaped disks that were stacked four to a .38 Special case. A buddy fired one of those into the Clear Ballistic gel at Snubbyfest back in the summer. (OK -- just tracked it down. It's post #114 in the two-projectile thread.)

I forget the details. But I think they were probably swaged from buckshot rather than cast from a mould.

[Good Cheer]

Yep, that's it. They were engineered so that the back sides fit the front sides.
For semi-auto and auto weapons the cones got elongated to feed reliably.
In Dogs Of War, Forsyth's book taken to the big screen, Christopher Walken's mercs had them in submachine gun.

[gwpercle]

" The back sides fit the front sides " this makes no sense , post several photo's so I can see what you are talking about... quad means 4 ...are they 4 projectiles in one load ?
I'm slow but I'm old .

In the movies all kinds of things work great but in real life they just might not pan out ...hence in reality there is no supply .
Gary

[ReloaderFred]

They were four short discs, with a button nose. The underside of each one is recessed so the button nose of the one underneath it would nest into the one above it. They were stacked on top of each other, and were about the same total length as a wadcutter bullet.

I've made similar many years ago by flattening 00 buckshot, then sizing it to .357". I could get four of them into a .38 Spl. case with a light charge of Bullseye. It was done as a novelty, and I soon abandoned the project.

Hope this helps.

Fred

[Thin Man]

The closest I have seen to your quadcutter concept is the Lyman mold #358101 which is a 75 grain button nose wadcutter. Very short, these will make the caster of short 22 and 25 boolits blush with shame for complaining about having to fight them in and out of a sizer. They are really difficult to size & lube but perform well down the barrel. Occasionally I would load 2 of these in a single case for recreational use only. I could get away with claiming that these loads were so fast the boolit broke in half on its way to the target when spectators saw 2 holes in a target from only one shot fired. They will stay accurate out to 25 yards for target work but fall off beyond that. I started casting in 1973 when I bought the furnace, sizer and cluster of molds from a guy who was going over to swaging. One of these molds was a 4-cavity Lyman 358101. This one and all the others I got from him are still with me, along with a few more gathered over the years.

[beagle]

Hensley and Gibbs made a mould for those way back when. I don't recall the number. Dean Grennell wrote an article in Gun Digest a long time ago but I gave my old Gun Digests to #2 son and can't look up the article. Maybe somebody will chime in here with a scan. As I recall, he had trouble with the segments sticking together and not separating. Resorted to sprinkling several grains of Bullseye between segments.
I have taken 00 Buck and bumped them out to .358 and loaded 3 in a .38 Special case and 4 in a .357 Magnum case. All right to about 25 yards but after that, they bleed off velocity really fast and at 50 yards scatter into about a 2 foot pattern. I get more milage out of 2 ball .357" loads in a .38 Special./beagle

[beagle]

https://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/33_1.jpg

Just researched it. That was a H & G #33 that I was referencing in the post above. Click on link for pic,/beagle

[Drm50]

Lyman made a mold for stackable 357 bullets back in 70s or 80s. It was in all the gun rags at the time. Our military experimented with 7.62 NATO in Duplex and Triplex rounds. I saw Duplex round in training, on a board cut in half to see how it was stacked. Triplex was mentioned but I never saw one. Later in RVn I saw neither in use or herd of them ever being issued. At same time they were into Nuclear rds for 7.62. Idiots read this and think it was a small atomic warhead. It was a projectile made from depleted uranium like some of our 20mm and the new generation chain guns fire. It allows the mass and velocity of smaller caliber weapons to penetrate armor.

[Good Cheer]

" The back sides fit the front sides " this makes no sense , post several photo's so I can see what you are talking about... quad means 4 ...are they 4 projectiles in one load ?
I'm slow but I'm old .

In the movies all kinds of things work great but in real life they just might not pan out ...hence in reality there is no supply .
Gary

Imagine four badminton birdies stacked. The backside of each one accepts the front of the one behind it. They were almost like miniature versions of the Lyman #575484 minie balls. They were made to stack in a tight fit, the truncated cone fronts exactly shaped to fit the hollow bases. The geometry of each piece designed to keep flying point first.

They were swaged, produced in 9mm, 38 Special, etc.
The idea was of course to fling a bunch of full bore diameter projectiles.
If a fella had a 9mm sub-machine gun it would work for what it was intended for, a fairly short range barrage.
For rifles the multiple projectile ideas never have worked out well when tried (in the 1860's ugliness with dismal results, too).

[Jtarm]

Great article about multi-projectile loads in the Feb 2020 Dillon Blue Press.

They had a WC mold milled down till it dropped 63-grain boolits with one lube groove.

They took an S&W 586 reamed to .357 max and loaded 4 over HS7. The author labeled this load disappointing because it “only” clocked 800 fps and “only” penetrated 18-21” in gel.

IDK what they expected to use it against,but but that’s a bit too much penetration for an SD load. Dispersed about 4” at 15 yards.

For a regular .357 mag load they put 2 WCs behind a 93-grain .380 RN sized to .359.