Your Favorite 310 Martini mold

[BossHoss]

Any Martini shooters here???

Which mold do you like....?

I love it, but am running out of stock on the heads I was given with the the rifle..I have no idea what they might be....roundnose .314 cant tell what mold it came from.

[JeffinNZ]

The only place to get a .310 IMHO is CBE (http://www.castbulletengineering.com.au/bullet-moulds/rifle/310-cadet). David has TEN different moulds. I have the 320 120 and the 323 125 both of which shoot GREAT.

[dromia]

This mould from Accurate is my go to mould for the 310 of which I shoot over 200 rounds a week.

The design was originally a Lee GB on here but it dropped a boolit with too small a heel for me as I like to just hand seat my Cadet boolits in the case so I had Accurate cut this mould for me to the Lee GB design but to my dimensions, it is just perfect and it shoots good out to 200 yrds.

It is so easy to hand load, de-prime, prime, drop powder, hand seat boolit. No case sizing.

The boolits are just tumble lube them in White Labels 45/45/10 and away I go, I got a five cavity mould from Accurate which works great but does like to be run cool.

http://www.accuratemolds.com/bullet_detail.php?bullet=32-120C-D.png

[fred2892]

I can highly recommend the design Dromia has steered you to in the above post.
I still use the original Lee group buy mould and find it to be a perfect fit for converted 32-20 RP or Starline brass.
The heel is however too small a diameter for use in my Bertram and Kynoch brass.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?125962-310-Cadet-group-Buy

(Having just re-read my post in the above link, I find it quite amusing that I was a little irked that a group buy had taken almost a year to materialise - how times and expectations change !! )

[Southern Son]

While that Accurate looks OK, I have to second Jeff in Kiwiland. I have a CBE mould, I have not cast with it for ages and I cannot remember which one it is. I am pretty sure that it is the 130grain boolit. Kick butt mould. I did notice that CBE is only selling one or two cavities moulds in that link from Jeff, and mine is a three cavity, so I don't know what is going on there.

[Southern Son]

I forgot to mention in my first post, I also have the Lee Cadet Mould, and it is RUBBISH, complete, total and utter RUBBISH. It is no good for any Cadet, the boolits are way too small, as in you can drop the boolit in the barrel, tip the rifle end up or down, and the boolit will pretty much just fall straight through. DO NO BUY THE LEE MOULD FOR THE CADET. you will be disappointed.

[dromia]

I suspect that is a function of your particular mould and Lee's poor production and quality control values. The design is sound.

My Lee GB mould drops boolits that fit mine and many other Martini's just fine and definitely won't rattle down the bore I just wanted a bigger heel for me to hand seat my boolits. I fact my Lee GB mould is on loan to a bespoke boolit caster here in the UK and he has many happy Cadet shooting customers using boolits from this particular Lee mould.

So whilst I would agree with being circumspect about buying any Lee mould as regards quality and specification you will have absolutely no problem with that GB design from Accurate and Tom will alter the specification to your particular requirement at no extra cost.

The boolit not only looks OK but performs very well indeed and as has been said Accurate will cut to your specification so going heavier for instance would not be a problem for them so long as you have the throat for it to fit. Also Accurate will do multiple cavity moulds, mine is a five cavity.

I have a few CBE moulds and they are indeed fine tools but Accurate's ability to work to your specifications is very handy especially when it comes to tweaking a boolit for such wide dimension variations as seem to occur with the Cadet.

[Bent Ramrod]

I bought a six cavity Lee GB mould for this caliber as well. I had some misgivings as my rifle's bore slugged 0.323" but the overwhelming vote of the Group was to have the mould cast 0.322." At the time, no other company offered anything comparable, so I bought in, despite my minority dissent.

The mould cast very well, and turning two cannelures in the smooth shank of the casting (to better hold lubricant) evidently displaced enough metal to make the boolits shootable out of my rifle. The heels click into the Bertram and Eley shells I have with no problems, but I do tumble lube, and the lube on the heel no doubt helps to keep things tight. No leading or evidence of poor fit in the barrel.

I later found an unmarked single cavity mould among a bunch of .310 Cadet stuff, and as far as I can see, boolits cast from it shoot as well, but no better, than those from the Lee mould. To be entirely fair to Lee, it might have been better to have ordered a slightly larger cavity, especially as even back then, there were complaints about undersize Lee custom moulds being sent back to the manufacturer for rework. But it worked out well for me, and I don't regret my purchase. Never had a six cavity mould before then, and was wondering whether I could make one work. The thing casts like a dream.

[BombDoc]

My .310 mould is an RCBS special that was retailed through Jim Goodwin at NDFS (long gone now..) It works fine with my Greener .310. Presumably RCBS still has the cherry..?

I dip the bullets in thinned liquid alox and then fill the cannelure with "thick" alox dripped off the end of a toothpick. Takes a while, but there is never anything good on the telly these days...!

[dromia]

The RCBS mould was still available last time I looked, it is a fine mould and at one time was all we Cadet shooters had.

As I shoot the Cadet a lot the multiple cavity moulds help me keep up with my casting in a way that the RCBS 2 cavity doesn't.

I have never found a need to apply Xlox thickly or fill the grooves with the the stuff for cadet velocities, for me and Xlox less is more.

[Southern Son]

I suspect that is a function of your particular mould and Lee's poor production and quality control values. The design is sound.

My Lee GB mould drops boolits that fit mine and many other Martini's just fine and definitely won't rattle down the bore I just wanted a bigger heel for me to hand seat my boolits. I fact my Lee GB mould is on loan to a bespoke boolit caster here in the UK and he has many happy Cadet shooting customers using boolits from this particular Lee mould.

So whilst I would agree with being circumspect about buying any Lee mould as regards quality and specification you will have absolutely no problem with that GB design from Accurate and Tom will alter the specification to your particular requirement at no extra cost.

The boolit not only looks OK but performs very well indeed and as has been said Accurate will cut to your specification so going heavier for instance would not be a problem for them so long as you have the throat for it to fit. Also Accurate will do multiple cavity moulds, mine is a five cavity.

I have a few CBE moulds and they are indeed fine tools but Accurate's ability to work to your specifications is very handy especially when it comes to tweaking a boolit for such wide dimension variations as seem to occur with the Cadet.

The Lee Group Buy and the Lee mould are two different animals. I never saw the GB, but the normal Lee mould is a two cavity, it casts a pointy boolit with a heel and a single lube groove. Mine is about 0.310 dia.

[dromia]

I never knew Lee did a heeled cadet bullet mould, what product number is it.

Dropping at .310 I'm not surprised it just fell down your barrel sounds more like their 32/20 mould diameter still never knew they did a heeled version. I like to see it all the same though might have some other applications, heeled designs are hard to get.

[JeffinNZ]

Lee did a run of dies and moulds for an AU dealer. From what I understand they got BOTH quite wrong.

[dromia]

Ah so it was a special, I see, not a stock item.

Lee got it wrong? Now that does surprise me, not!

[Southern Son]

Lee did a run of dies and moulds for an AU dealer. From what I understand they got BOTH quite wrong.

Yep, I got the Lee dies, too. Lucky for me when I started fooling around with the Cadet I was living in Dysart where I had a mate with a lathe. He made me a neck sizing die that would hold the boolits from the Lee mould, but they shot like rubbish. Now I have the CBE mould, but the heel is too big on the new boolit for the Lee dies or the neck sizing die, so I am going to have to buy myself a lathe (I'll see if that one flies with the Missus).

[BossHoss]

Thanks for discussing this at length, I am getting informed and soaking it up....

:wink:

[windy]

the cbe 120gr boolit shoots fine for me out of my necked-up 25-35 cases; so does an out-of-production 120gr lyman ideal 32359. i size both to .323. the cbe is a 3-cavity, the lyman 2. my cadet was rechambered to 32 special; shoots a 32-40 load pretty well.
windy

[Bad Ass Wallace]

So many moulds and so many mixed results. It makes it so important to accurately slug your barrel to get a true bore size. These can and do vary between 0.316 and 0.321 if fact it has always puzzled me if heeled boolits are so great why was factory ammunition loaded with a conventional non-held 0.316 jacketed projectile?

The answer lies in the way these little guns were used. Original BSA barrels were 0.316 but the contract for replacement of worn out barrels went to Greener and these Greener replacements were .319/.320 which triggered the introduction of a heeled bullet so they would shoot. Greener barrels were fully chambered but fitted with BSA rear sights. BSA replacement barrels were complete with sights but short chambered so that a reamer was required to tweek the final chambering and headspace. (I still have one new BSA in factory grease!)

I have 2 Cadets with genuine new BSA replacement barrels. Both shoot well with a conventional sized and lubricated 125gn boolit sized to .317. My Greener however requires a heeled boolit of .321"diameter to achieve the same accuracy.

Cast Bullet Engineering make both types at their 'one-stop' Cadet cast bullet mould shop:D

[pworley1]

I have had good results with the RCBS 30-120 heeled mold.