any interest in Ideal 429507?

[keyhole]

I have a chance to buy an Ideal 2 cavity mold 429507. The mold has a recess in which a zinc washer is placed and then the metal poured. It utilizes the Harvey Prot-X bore idea. I have not seen the mold but photos on the internet show a cavity with no lube grooves. Apparently, the zinc washer was intended to prevent lead buildup, so no lube was necessary. I was told that the mold is in excellent shape, having been owned by a tool and die maker.
It seems like this concept was an evolutionary deadend. One would have to find a supply of the zinc washers to use it. Is there still interest in something like this? It is being offered for $35. Could I get my money out of it if I bought it?
Thank you for your comments.

Keyhole

[MT Gianni]

That is a great price if you are a mold collector and want one for your collection.I Believe that the 38 mold was much more popular and that there were still washers available in that caliber as recently as the early 90's. If one could not find any other molds you could probably have a machinist make it a pb model but it would be cheaper over all to get a custom mold.
Could you get your money out of it? Sure if you found someone who wanted to say " I bet you have never seen one of these".

[J..]

I have a chance to buy an Ideal 2 cavity mold 429507. The mold has a recess in which a zinc washer is placed and then the metal poured. It utilizes the Harvey Prot-X bore idea. I have not seen the mold but photos on the internet show a cavity with no lube grooves. Apparently, the zinc washer was intended to prevent lead buildup, so no lube was necessary. I was told that the mold is in excellent shape, having been owned by a tool and die maker.
It seems like this concept was an evolutionary deadend. One would have to find a supply of the zinc washers to use it. Is there still interest in something like this? It is being offered for $35. Could I get my money out of it if I bought it?
Thank you for your comments.

Keyhole

Some info on the Harvey Prot-X bore moulds...
(http://bulletmoldblog.com/blog1/2012/08/24/the-harvey-bullets/)

Evolutionarily a dead-end....good idea though. The concept is still around as Corbin, I believe, makes a swage set to fix a copper 'wiper' to the back of a swaged bullet.

There are still makers for the zinc washers out there if your Google-fu is strong.

The real kiss of death to these things was trying to precisely place a zinc washer into a blazing hot mould...tedious and somewhat hazardous - not a great sales combination.

[keyhole]

Thanks for the feedback, MT Gianni and J..

After reading the information you provided this mold is not something I would ever use. He also has a 429348 which I will probably buy. Unless he will let the 429507 go for a really good price I will pass on it.

thanks again

[MikeS]

The washers ARE still available, and the same company also offers swaging dies to make the boolits. The idea was that zinc would coat the barrel after a few shots, and that zinc is an excellent lubricant. It was one of those things, some folks found they worked great, and others a complete failure, so it's up to each individual to decide if it works for them. I believe the H&G moulds worked better than the lyman, because they were nose pour, so the lead didn't have to travel thru the (relatively) cold washer before forming the majority of the boolit. Also, if sizing the boolits it worked best to use a Star sizer but size them base first, otherwise the zinc washer had a tendency to pull away from the rest of the boolit.

[BCall]

I believe the H&G moulds worked better than the lyman, because they were nose pour, so the lead didn't have to travel thru the (relatively) cold washer before forming the majority of the boolit.

Some of the H&G molds may have been nose pour, but not all. I purchased a single cavity H&G hollow point mold for the 45 cal prot-x boolit, and it's base pour. And I have a 38 cal Lyman version that is nose pour. In casting with both types, I can't say that one worked better than the other. What works best is to make sure the washers are heated as warm as possible before using a set of forceps to install them in the mold as quickly as possible before pouring.

I'm not sure why they did some as nose pour and some as base pour, but there seems to be little difference when casting them. Personally I think they started with nose pour, but switched to base pour when hollow point versions were wanted.

An interesting aside to that though, I have and have had several more of the Prot-x-bore designs and am always looking for more, and all of the 38/357 ones I have or had were all nose pour, while the 44's and 45's are all base pour. But I know there were 357 base pour ones because they had some HP versions. I've just never seen them.

[MikeS]

I wonder, considering that zinc melts at a higher temp than lead, if it would be possible to melt down shot boolits, and then skim off the washers as they floated to the top, then cleanup and reuse the washers again? I also wonder if smelting down a pot full of lead boolits, and say 50 - 100 of those boolits had the zinc washers on them, and they were not caught before they melted, would that small an amount of zinc screw up the entire pot? I make my own Lyman #2, and I had one ingot analyzed, and it has quite a bit of zinc in it (I don't recall the amount, I was surprised there was any as I don't use wheel weights at all) yet the alloy cast great looking boolits, and I never had a problem with mould fill-out.