Where to buy .25 cal mold?

[Hutzpah]

Does anyone know where I could buy a
single cavity .25 caliber bullet mold with a weight around 130gr -140gr from?

Most are around 110gr or small the biggest I've found so far is the
RCBS Products -82016 - BULLET MOULD .257-120gr-SP.

thanks

Hutzpah

[Nobade]

That's going to be a hard one. 25 cal. barrels aren't normally available with tighter than a 1:10 twist which will stabilize up to a 120 gr. bullet. Are you looking for a PP bullet for a 6.5mm? It may be easier to size down a 6.5 borerider like the RCBS 140 SIL or one of the SAECO designs to .258 or so then patch it back up.

[Hutzpah]

"Are you looking for a PP bullet for a 6.5mm?"

That's right I want to paper batch a .25 cal bullet to shoot in my 6.5x55 Howa.
I tried a while ago to down size a 130gr 6.5 cast bullet but found it very hard and ended up removed bullet weight.
I was toll that a .25 cal mold will be the easier way to go.

thanks for the reply Nobade.

Hutzpah

[docone31]

Unless, you step size my way.
With my .30s, and .303, I size to .308. From there I size to either .309, or .314.
If you use .264 jacketed bullets, then, why not size to .260, and wrap up, sizeing to .265, or .266?
The 6.5 mold you have will give your nose diameter, it is the body that needs sizeing.
I routinely size my .312 mold to .308 without weight loss. I am sure, after wrapping, I am again sizeing my casting. That is the point.
I also use very hard lead in my castings. I have some zinc mixed in and like the performance.
You are talking a bottleneck cartridge with smokeless powder. Not BP straight walled. Your parameters are going to be different.
In the beginning, paper patching was for Black Powder. However, I have found excellent results with smokeless. I have even fired a full magazine of patche through my Ishy, and Smelly.
Another point, when I load light, I get lousey performance. I use start load data for the powder I use for the corresponding jacketed weight bullet. I crank them right out.
When I first started doing this, I used traceing paper. Great stuff! To experiment, I went to lined notebook paper, and standard printer paper. Dollar store stuff. Less tears twisting the tails with the thicker paper. I also use a cigarette roller to roll my patches. I believe, the roller makes tighter wraps than I could do by hand. It really compresses the wraps on. I wrap with them soaking wet. The roller squeegees the water out of the paper. Next day, they are ready to wax and size.
Pdawg has wrapped the .257, one of these days, I am going to try to wrap for our .243s.
I am not going to do them by hand for sure. I have not yet, to this day, hand wrapped my .30s, or .303s. I do them all by the roller.
So, if you have a 6.5 mold, try sizeing down a few thousandths, and wrapping up to over groove, then size to .001-.002 over groove. Start with .001 and see what happens.
With my Smelly, I had slugged the bore, wrapped to .3135, got laughed at at the range. I smeared some Valve Lapping compound on the 18 I had left and got dramatic results! The thickness of the grit, plus the patch diameter gave me my final wrap diameter. .314. All my .30s eat .309 all day long. They print better with paper than they do with jacketeds side by side. The POI is higher with paper. With my scope, the jacketeds are on the dot below the crosshairs. With paper, the crosshairs are the POI. Same powder charge.
Paper is better.
I can find my fired jacketeds in the berm, I cannot find my paper patched boolitts. They go in too deep.
Toss that one around. Might work for you also.

[Nobade]

Funny you should mention this, just yesterday I was patching up RCBS 85gr. cowboy bullets to shoot in my 260 rifle.

To size 6.5 bullets down, cast them from air cooled wheelweights. Size them. then oven heat treat/quench if you want them hard. Then patch and load. Trying to size a fully hardened bullet can be tough, as you have learned. And if you use a borerider design, only a little of it needs to be sized. If you pick a 25 cal mould, try to get one with paralell sides, like a Loverin style. You won't want a bore riding 25 cal, because it will be too small on the nose. But a bore riding 6.5mm will be about perfect.

Let us know how it turns out with your Howa. I am curious as to what performance we can get from 6.5mm rifles and paper patched bullets, due to the fast twist. My 260 has a 1:8 inch twist and performs well up to 2000 fps with normal cast bullets. My Swedish M96 is much tighter, and won't go over 1700 fps without tearing apart a cast bullet. I'm hoping to boost that a bit with paper patching, but haven't started working with it yet.

[Hutzpah]

Can't believe it I managed to size down my 130gr 6.5 cast bullets.
Still had to drill one out of the die but think I have got it sorted now.

You have to make sure they feed perfectly in to the sizer or they
just won't go through.Used Vaseline as lube.

From mold-0.271
2
1st die- 0.269(grove)
5
2rd-0.264
5
3rd-0.259(0.001 over bore)

To get them there I have to size 3 time when I start to wrap them that will
make 4.
Anyway finished weight is good all around 131gr.

thanks Hutzpah

[45 2.1]

http://www.neihandtools.com/catpages/mold_pg4.htm

The #17A has worked pretty well for that as do several other obsolete molds (Lyman 25717 at about 90 gr.). Any of the molds for the 25-20 win should work fine. Anything harder than air cooled wheel weights is counterproductive here.

[docone31]

Rather than Vaseline, which is hard to clean off, try Dish Soap.
You want the prime casting to be ABSOLUTELY lube free. You do not want anything holding on a piece of patch.
With dish soap, I size my castings, toss them in a bowl, and flush them with hot water.