Indexed mould cavities

[stocker]

The other day I wondered why a person would punch identifiers on both cavities of a mould. A member pointed out that perhaps the previous owner wanted to index the bullets when chambering them in his rifle. Good point.

Here's another purpose that suggested itself from his reply.

At present I only have one sizer die for 35 on hand and it is almost .360.

When sizing 358009's it just barely kisses the bullets and basically rounds them a bit.

I split yesterdays castings in two piles. One pile to leave unhardened and the other to oven harden. Normally I would check them , heat treat them and lube in a larger die. Pan lubing is a pain so I tried a little test on several bullets.

I set the checks by using the index marks on the bullet dead center front in the sizer. After checking them I gave the bullets a coat of magic marker and resized them with the index marks again dead center front. The marker ink was barely disturbed, smeared but not removed. I think it helped that I have a very good fit on the nose punch , it being glassed to contour.

I went ahead and heat treated them last night and lubed them today in the same die again using the indexing marks. Have to let them age a bit to normalize and will see what the results are but my impression is that there was little surface change. Diameter of some individual bullets measured before and after lubing is the same. If I had measured all 268 bullets I may have encountered change but I only checked diameters on a half dozen.

I think this will get me by until I get another larger die.

[NVcurmudgeon]

Stocker, an interesting experiment. Please keep us posted. As to getting a larger die, Lyman's biggest .35 cal. is a nominal .360". My Lyman of that size sizes WW + 2% tin boolits to exactly .360". You may have to lap a die to get what you need. What does your barrel slug?

[stocker]

NVcurmudgeon: This barrel is a 5 groove so after slugging it I was surprised to find that out. I talked to the barrel maker by phone and he said it should be .358. Ultimately I took the slug to a local macine shop and a friend set it up and confirmed it at almost exactly .358 . So that is what I'm going at. My sizer die also says .360 but it actually sizes about 1/2 thou. less than that. I'll eventually get another and if it does the same it will take a small amount of honing to open it a bit.