Lyman 429383 RN

[NorthMoccasin]

I recently acquired a Lyman/Ideal 429383 Mold and have been very impressed with its accuracy in my Ruger 5 1/2" 44 Special. With 6.5 to 6.8gr Unique, it makes one ragged hole @ 20 yds. Most SWC's will not do as well in this gun. I would like to try this boolet for hunting with a hollowpoint. I have a Forester hollowpointer, but would I be better off getting the mold altered to make hollowpoints? Does anyone have experience with roundnose hollowpoints? BTW This is my first post. I have been reading posts on this site for a long time though.



Thanks!

[rintinglen]

I have a number of the excellent 45.1 designed MP molds which are in essence hollow point round nose. I use the 434-640 in my 44 Special loads, it runs about 250 grains with the large pins. They work very well. For hunting, I run them hotter, with 7.5 grains of Unique. I question the ability of the boolit to expand at velocities much under 850 fps, so I stick with the Skeeter load.

I have a 429-383 DC that is very accurate with either 6.5 grains of Unique or 5.0 grains of Red Dot, but I have not considered HP'ing it.
By the way, welcome. Like you, I spent quite a while auditing this site before I became bold enough to post. I will say that I learned more about casting here in the last 8 years than I did in the previous 35 years. And I still learn stuff.

[Silver Jack Hammer]

Welcome, you've made a big splash with me announcing your work with the 429383, I want to hear all about it.

Hollowpoints are do-able but take a little research and development. My Forester hollowpoint drill is not any good, it drills a hole but the hole it drills is not large enough to enable any expansion. You'll have to work with alloys and velocities and but drill your boolits with a larger drill bit. Your load is giving you just over 800 fps, I'd suggest using 20:1 and 3/8" bit for a larger hollowpoint cavity than what the Forester provides.

I shoot into water for testing, water isn't a very good medium but it's readily available and it's density is always constant. Wet newspaper is better but it requires more to work with. I've never mixed up ballistic gel but I've seen it at ranges for demonstrations and it requires a lot of work.

[NorthMoccasin]

Thanks for the information guys. I think I will send the mold off to Erik and get it set up for making hollowpoints, with a fairly large cavity. I think I'll send a single cavity 429215 for the same treatment while I'm at it. I will report back here with results when I get them back. As far as testing expansion, do you think shooting vertically down into a 55 gal drum of water will stop a 44 slug without punching a hole in the bottom? :grin:

[Silver Jack Hammer]

If the boolit doesn't expand it'll travel over 50 inches in water. I put a 45 ACP 452374 at 831 fps through water and it went 56 1/2". A 45 Long Colt 454190 at 875 fps went 68".

If a handgun boolit expands it will stop in an average of 22" in water. Even high power rifle boolits that expand stop in water. I shot my son's 7mm-'08 with a 140 gr Remington Core-Lokt at 2780 fps through water and it stopped in 33". A 130 gr Speer Hot Core at 2869 fps stopped in 24" of water.