Mike in Reedley
01-31-2016, 01:00 PM
About 20 years ago I bought a Lyman 452454 2 cavity mold and had great luck with it in a variety of .45 Colts. Ten years or so ago I bought what I thought was a used four cavity mold ( but was really a 454424 mold) of the same bullet at a swap meet.
I finally got around to casting some boolit with the 4 cavity and mixed those in with some boolit from the two cavity. Last night I was loading some near max loads for a 250 grain boolit in a Colt SAA and noticed the lube rings were different on some of the boolits. Some had squared bottoms and some radius. After loading 50 I noticed the meplats were different on the two boolits.
I finally woke up and weighed the two different boolits and learned the 2 cavity (squared Keith grease rings) throws a 248 grain boolit while the 4 cavity radius rings throws a 268 grain with the same alloy.
I was was able to separate out the two different boolits by comparing meplats and confirming the difference by weighing each loaded round. After a bit of Internet searching I learned that Lyman made a couple of variations of the 452454 and 454424 mold.
I'm sure glad I caught my error before running those heavy, way over weight loads through my Colt. I hope my long winded story might keep others from the same mistake. Now I'm off to pull some boolits!
I finally got around to casting some boolit with the 4 cavity and mixed those in with some boolit from the two cavity. Last night I was loading some near max loads for a 250 grain boolit in a Colt SAA and noticed the lube rings were different on some of the boolits. Some had squared bottoms and some radius. After loading 50 I noticed the meplats were different on the two boolits.
I finally woke up and weighed the two different boolits and learned the 2 cavity (squared Keith grease rings) throws a 248 grain boolit while the 4 cavity radius rings throws a 268 grain with the same alloy.
I was was able to separate out the two different boolits by comparing meplats and confirming the difference by weighing each loaded round. After a bit of Internet searching I learned that Lyman made a couple of variations of the 452454 and 454424 mold.
I'm sure glad I caught my error before running those heavy, way over weight loads through my Colt. I hope my long winded story might keep others from the same mistake. Now I'm off to pull some boolits!