A homemade PP mould

[Chicken Thief]

A deal with a friend means a Mauser Gewehr 1871/84 is on it's way to my door.
A Lee dieset from Titan reloading in transit and i ended up ordering 100 pcs of Starline 45-90 from Sweden.

Now i have the same economical ability as your great country ie. broke.

So all i could do for boolits was making a pp mould myself, here's the tale of the project.

1) Boolit design, ehhh no! I winged that one ;)

A piece of SS in the lathe turned dovn to 11.12mm~.4395"
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010518.jpg

Some ad hoc forming of the boolit nose
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010519.jpg

2) Milling the reamer
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010520.jpg

I opted for 4 flutes
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010521.jpg

Then some deburring and sharpening of the reamer.

3) The mould.
I found a nice piece of Hex 60xx series aluminium and that is going to be the mould.
Drilled to @24mm~.95" and reamed slowly with lots of cooling fluid.
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010522.jpg

A sprueplate from a dead Lee mould is going on. To center it over the boolit void i turned this little piece of plastic.
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010523.jpg
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010524.jpg

Marked and drilled/tapped for the sprue plate.
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010526.jpg

Relief milled for the sprueplate swing.
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010525.jpg

[Chicken Thief]

4) A handle is a must.
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010529.jpg
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010530.jpg

The mould threaded for the handle.
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010528.jpg

The finished product.
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010531.jpg

5) The proof is in the pudding.
It casts fine boolits, a bit light and the mould had a few quirks.
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010533.jpg
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010532.jpg

The diameter is spot on (fools luck!)
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010534.jpg

[Chicken Thief]

6) The follow up.
A stop screw for the sprue plate and some light milling so the boolit has sufficient clearense to eject.
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010535.jpg

I lengthened the void by @3mm~.12".
From 23.6mm~.928" to 26.6mm~1.048"
The small ones in the front.
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010537.jpg

New weight is much better
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010539.jpg

Oh btw, my patching paper is 1.6mil" and better than 50% cotton so start dim was given.

.4395" boolit + 6.6mil" paper = .4461"

Thats a wrap (got it ;) )

[polara426sh]

How do you get the boolit out of the mould? Does it just fall out from the sprue end, or am I missing something?

[Chicken Thief]

It dont just fall out, 4-6 raps on the bottom and it will give.

[longbow]

Nice work.

I make a similar mould but use an ejector pin which in some cases is a full diameter nose form, in some just an HP pin and in some, just a small flat nosed pin.

If the mould is lapped lightly to produce a smooth inside with very slight taper over the length of boolit they generally drop out easily and really don't need an ejector pin.

I have used steel, bronze and brass for moulds and all work fine. Aluminum should be even better for boolit release.

Ideal used to make moulds like this for PP boolits many years ago. They used a full diameter nose form/ejector so weight was adjustable by positioning the nose form up or down in the mould.

I made a .30 cal PP mould that will cast from 100 grs to 200 grs. A very handy type of mould.

Did you harden the reamer or just use as is?

I usually make a simple D bit to ream cavities and in smaller sizes, old automotive head bolts work well as they are about grade 8. I anneal, make the D bit to shape I want, mill flat to the center line for the length of cavity, then heat treat. They easily cut cavities in steel.

Necessity (and cheapness ~ I'm cheap) are the mother of invention!

Your mould and boolits look good and should work just fine.

Longbow

[Chicken Thief]

And it is spot on wrapped.

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/Chickenthief/Skydning/Mauser%2071-84/R0010540.jpg

[heathydee]

Here is mine .
http://www.castboolits.gunloads.com/album.php?albumid=236

[Buckshot]

.............Chicken Thief, thanks for posting your photo story of how you made your mould. I always enjoy seeing stuff like that. I take both the "Home Shop Machinist" magazines and have bought several of their projects books. I enjoy seeing how people make their setups and accomplish their project more then what they actually ended up making :mrgreen:

What you made is much like a very simple "Pound Type (swage) Die". These are simply a piece of steel with the desired shape bored into it, and then lapped VERY smooth. Place a lead cylinder into it and then with a closely fitting rod and hammer, the lead is upset in the hole. The hunk of steel is flipped over and banged down over a hole until the swaged slug falls out[smilie=w:

If you have a 4 jaw chuck for your lathe you can use a couple rectangular pieces of aluminum after squaring them up and then bore your cavity. After milling handle slots & etc you'd be on your way. Alternatively for the mould you've already made you could set it back up and bore a hole through the bottom and add an ejector pin to push your boolit out. Via a different ejector pin you could also make hollowpoints.

As longbow suggested you can use a D reamer, or 'Half drill' (as I've also heard them called. Another name, if ground to a shape is a 'Spoon'.

http://www.fototime.com/FBC4A50229228CB/standard.jpghttp://www.fototime.com/6DD15BDBE5D31B1/standard.jpg

Left:This is a spoon I ground to form a swage die to make Right: These swaged bullets for paper patching. They're all different weights, some with HP's and some without. This was the swage die's first outting so I was playing around with it.

http://www.fototime.com/1E69FACFF7FA727/standard.jpghttp://www.fototime.com/B30E60AD133ACBC/standard.jpghttp://www.fototime.com/826B799366DFB7B/standard.jpg

Left: This is the first mould I made. It's a 3 cavity to cast the cylindrical slugs that will be later swaged to shape. Middle: The bottom plate is fixed solid to the bottom of the left mould block and doesn't move. Each cavity has a piston with a threaded stem that allows it to be adjusted up or down. There is a lock nut under the bottom plate to lock them in place. The mould was made out of .750" x 1.5" 6061 T651 rectangular aluminum bar.Right: Here's some paper patched.

[Buckshot]

The 2nd mould I made was to provide slugs to 'proof' the dies I make. It wasn't for boolits.

http://www.fototime.com/55D15A4B5F3108F/standard.jpghttp://www.fototime.com/530DD5A2E476BA1/standard.jpg

It was made from some of the same aluminum barstock as the core mould. The alignment pins mate into holes containing stainless steel tube as does the core mould's pins. This time the mould was made all on the milling machine.

http://www.fototime.com/EF0456293630502/standard.jpghttp://www.fototime.com/A0D59ED4A51A13D/standard.jpg

Left: Yeah I know, you're not supposed to use a drillchuck to hold endmills! Heck, the chuck was there to drill the starter holes, and since the endmill was simply getting plunged into each hole to open it up some, I used it. Right: Each hole was then bored with a boring head. Each hole was 0.010" larger in OD then the previous hole. They too were simply bored via plunging as there were no lube grooves.

http://www.fototime.com/11609D54AA9989C/standard.jpghttp://www.fototime.com/B55E2CC4F2DF8E0/standard.jpg

Left: This is the tool I ground to use for the slug cavities, and is just a 1/4" HSS drill blank. Right: These are "Half drills" or otherwise also known as 'D' reamers. I did a search on E-Bay for D reamers and came up with a couple pages of "Letter D" reamers, and some other stuff I don't recall. I don't remember how I ran across these as they were listed at Half Drills. I forget what I paid for the 6 of'em. They're 23/64" and checking MSC I was shocked to see that they were darned expensive. I checked back on E-Bay and the same seller had another batch for the same price so I got those also. Next time I need a form tool I'll be able to use one of these as a basis.

.................Buckshot