Interesting Mould

[MikeS]

Hi All.

I recently bought a small single cavity mould that has handles built in like the early ideal ones did. This one is a clone of the 452374, but it's made from either brass, or bronze, I'm not sure which. My question is, I remember hearing about a company that made moulds that were clones of the Ideal moulds, but in bronze (or brass?), but can't remember the name, does anyone know who might have made this mould? Here are a couple of pictures of the mould. (these are from the auction listing, I've cleaned it up since getting it)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33510159/452374Clone1.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/33510159/452374Clone2.JPG

[BCall]

Looks like a Yankee mold. While they are similar, I wouldn't exactly call them a clone. Do the handles have grooves with wire in them instead of ferrules? Here is the Yankee mold I have-

http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh259/blcall/SN851794.jpg
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh259/blcall/SN851796.jpg
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh259/blcall/SN851795.jpg

[MikeS]

Yup. that's it! Yes, my mould's wood has wire in a groove instead of ferules. The only marking I can find is the number 2 on both the hinge, and sprue plate of my mould. Does you mould have any numbers on it? It appears that your mould has a dot where mine has the number 2 on it, so I wonder if that's just a way of knowing which sprue plate goes on which mould (if they're fit by hand), or if it means something else?

[NoZombies]

I have a few of the Yankee molds. I also have one that is marked "Rorbacher" which was the name of the guy who owned the company, apparently. I don't know if it's an earlier variation, or a later one, with the marking.

[BCall]

I dunno Mike, mine has no other markings on it. There is an article on castpics about the Yankee molds under the historical mold catalogs section.

[MikeS]

Thanks for the info. Looking at the article on Castpics has shed some light on the mould. In the article written by Beagle, picture 11 shows 2 moulds, and he states that one of them is a 45 Cal round nose boolit that's about the same as the 452374, and that the only marking on it was a 2 on one of the blocks. Well, that description fits my mould as well, same design, same number on one of the blocks, so perhaps this mould is their #2 design? I had assumed that it was just an assembly number, sort of like you see on Lyman moulds so they know what parts go together, but 2 different moulds, same design, same number on the block, has to mean something!

[beagle]

Yes, that's a Yankee or maybe a Rohrbacher as they took over from Yankee I'm told. Made a lot of clones of Lyman/Ideal designs.

The normal ID is the twisted wire holding the handles. Looks like the wire is gone on yours.

Normally made from bronze.

I have two or three and they cast really good. A piece of history and well worth owning./beagle

[MikeS]

Actually mine has the wire, it's just located in a channel in the wood, that might have actually been made from the wire sinking into the wood when the wire was tightened. I had to take a plastic mallet, and tap the twisted ends of the wire into the wood, as I cast wearing Ove-Gloves, and they kept catching on the twisted wire ends on the bottom of the handles. The one bad thing is that it looks like a dog chewed on the ends of the wood, I cut off the wood to make them look a bit better (and to keep the wood from splitting) and so now my wooden handles are only about 4" long! I had some trouble with the mould not releasing the boolits easily on one of the blocks, so I polished the cavities by spinning a boolit in the cavity after covering it with some polishing compound, now the boolits drop out real easy! So now I just cast up another 250 boolits from the mould. Now to see how they shoot!