Ideal 431244/Lyman 429244?

[JDL]

Can anyone tell me when the numbers were changed on this Thompson design?
I just got an Ideal 431244 from madcaster and it is one of the easiest molds I've had the pleasure to use. Thanks -JDL

[floodgate]

JDL:

"Can anyone tell me when the numbers were changed on this Thompson design?
I just got an Ideal 431244 from madcaster and it is one of the easiest molds I've had the pleasure to use. Thanks -JDL"

I dug into my Lyman files, trying to chase this down. The Ray Thompson gas-check SWC designs #431215 and 431244 were first shown - under those numbers - in Ideal Handbook No. 39 (May, 1953), and appeared again in HB No. 40 (1955) and in a fold-out chart of Lyman-Ideal bullets dated 3-56. In the First Edition "Handbook of Cast Bullets", dated July, 1958, page 89 has a writeup on these bullets by Thompson, listing suggested loads for them (as well as #358156, and #452490, similar designs for the .38 / .357 and the .45 ACP / AR) where the two .44 bullets again carry the "431-" size-to prefix; BUT, the detail bullet pages 150 and 153 show the same bullets as #429244 and #429215, respectively, as do all the Handbooks from No. 41 (1957) on. So the change must have occurred in 1956-57 or so (allowing a little lead time for Handbook collation, editing and printing). Does your #431244 have the vent lines? (These seem to have been introduced in the early-to-mid-50s.)

Incidentally, bullets #358156, #431-/429215 and 431-/429244 are among the few examples* I know of where the "cherry number" seems to have deliberately been chosen to reflect the design bullet weight, rather than the usual more-or-less sequential number which was by then running in the high -400s (as in the case of the Thompson .45 caliber design #452490). Cherry numbers -156 and -244 had become available from previously-dropped older designs, but the -215 displaced the existing "Anderton" hemispherical-nosed target bullet #429215, which was then re-numbered as #429478, in the current cherry number sequence of that time! Maybe Thompson insisted on this when he passed the designs on to Lyman.

Had enough trivia for one day?

* The .458 Winchester Magnum "Hammerhead" #462560, currently listed as 545 grains, MAY be another example.
floodgate

[JDL]

Thanks floodgate! Yes, mine does have the vent lines and no, I never have enough trivia. :-) -JDL

[hollow-point]

very helpful about #462560! would like to purchase this mold if one is available.