Where to get a patchable boolit mould for 44

[Charlie Horse]

Right now I don't have access to a metal lathe so I was wondering if anyone sells a mould that would drop boolits that could be patched to 44 caliber? My 44 Contender likes boolits sized .430-.431. So where could I buy a mould that drops about 250 grain boolits at about .423" dia.?

[pdawg_shooter]

I use regular grooved bullets reduced to the dia. I need in a lapped out lee sizer die. Prefer these to smooth sided bullets, the grooves hold a little extra lube. You can try full dia. bullets patched with onion skin (9lb) paper, but I have had better luck sizing .001/.0015 over bore dia. and patching with 16lb.

[longbow]

If I had time I would make you a push out mould like the one I use but unfortunately I am just too busy right now. A single cavity is also slow and I plan to make a 4 or 6 cavity when time permits.

I know that isn't much help but maybe this is:

I tend to agree with pdawg shooter on the grooves. My .44 isn't too picky and shoots smooth sided slugs well maybe due to microgroove rifling but my .30 cal's with deeper rifling seem to like a little extra grip on the patch so I have taken to grooving boolits for them and so far results look good. So, maybe a mould for .44-40 at 0.427" sized down a bit would work for you or sized after patching in the right sized die. Using 0.0015" to 0.002" paper on a 0.427" boolit wouldn't be much oversize.

Another option may be to try teflon tape on a standard 0.429" cast or again on a 0.427". There are some posts here about using teflon tape successfully.

Personally, while the paper patching has its place I find it a bit tedious and would rather not do it unless nescessary. I am working with boolit diameters, lubes and boolit styles (lube grooves) to try to avoid paper patching except for special loads.

[slughammer]

I made a push thru sizer die and lapped it out to .426. Pushed through some 429244 that were cast of ACWW at about .430 dia. Had no trouble getting them down to size with the loading press leverage. This was without any sizing lube. So it is possible to size boolits down quite a bit. More sizing may require doing it in 2 steps. I also have some of the same boolits cast of 1/2pure 1/2 wheel weights, I imagine they will size down easier.

The ones that I did size down I wrapped with 2 wraps of MEAD Academie tracing paper as suggested here. 5 were lubed with LLA and 5 with JPW, both applied by my finger. I loaded these 10 rounds today with 33gr of 5744 and hope to shoot them tomorrow out of my Marlin 444.

[slughammer]

Shot the ACWW paper patched today. Accuracy at 50 yards was under 2" for each 5 shot group. I do need to make a new seater for my die, the current seater is for contacting an ogive and 2 of the SWC's I loaded were visibly canted; I doubt that aided accuracy at all. Next test will be boolits seated straight. When I wrapped 429244, I left the gas checks off and I wraped the paper up over the front drive band. The diameter after wrapping is .432 dia. From what I saw, the paper shards were flying directly out of the barrel, I had been concerned that going over the front drive band would affect cutting the paper. Apparently there are enough forces of other types to finish the job.

Another shooting session will hopefully happen next week, but first I need to make a seater to improve that aspect of the ammo.