Is this a pope style mold?

[NoZombies]

These photos are from ebay. It seems the top driving band is smaller in diameter than the bottom driving band. I assume this would be for breach seating?

http://nozombies.com/eb/375-1.jpg


http://nozombies.com/eb/375-3.jpg

[Artful]

Two-diameter or Pope style bullets have front bands of bore diameter or slightly larger, and a rear band or bands which are a couple of thousandths of an inch over the groove diameter. This design is not as popular as it once was. Single shot shooters sometimes find that a Pope style bullet can be dropped in the rifle chamber, then the loaded cartridge case with perhaps a cork wad can be chambered, and that the rifle will shoot with great accuracy.

To my eye that looks more like a Tapered design. Tapered bullets have bands that are about bore diameter at the front, and gradually get larger as they approach the rearmost band, which is several thousandths of an inch larger than groove diameter. Lyman made molds for tapered bullets in the past and other custom mold makers make them now.

[32ideal]

NoZoombies that appears to my eye to be a re-cut Lyman mould, since they machined the spot where the new number is stamped and probably removed the original number at the same time.
Could be wrong, but did not find a listing for Lyman or Ideal mould number 375325.
32ideal

[excess650]

Do you know who did the modification? Its now a tapered, nose pour design. The idea behind nose pour is to have perfect bases, and any imperfection or imbalance will be at the nose end where it causes the least accuracy problems.

Those bullets are tyically cast soft and breech seated right into the rifling. The charged case goes in after the bullet is in place.

[Green Frog]

Do you know who did the modification? Its now a tapered, nose pour design. The idea behind nose pour is to have perfect bases, and any imperfection or imbalance will be at the nose end where it causes the least accuracy problems.

Those bullets are tyically cast soft and breech seated right into the rifling. The charged case goes in after the bullet is in place.

+1 to that! It looks like a nicely done recutting of an existing Lyman mould for breech seating use with a schuetzen rifle in .38-55 perhaps. It's a very desirable mould for that purpose, but probably not too useful otherwise.

Froggie

[GOPHER SLAYER]

These are pictures of a pope style mold. It was made by Hoch and cast a cylinder shaped wadcutter bullet. I was going to sell it until I shot a group thru my Ruger #1 IN 30-30. It was one ragged hole.