GB on LEE PP Boolit

[duke76]

I am wanting to start Paper Patching some Boolits but my molds are all the the large side for 45-70. I know I could have a custom mold made but am a little leary about spending 150-200 on a mold and find out paper patching is not for me so I got thinking about maybe trying to get a group buy on a Lee mold made just for paper patching, I was thinking about no grease grooves around 500 grains and .450 diameter. Most likely a 2 cavity, I really dont know how this group buy thing really works but I am sure if there is enought interest here someone else can help us out with the details, I am not married to these exact dimensions so if you think they should be different please say so. So I guess this thread is basically a feeler for a paper patch .45 caliber boolit, let me know if you are interested, I think we need 25 to avoid a setup charge, thanks for looking, Todd

[dromia]

Sounds like a good idea Todd, suggest you float it on the GB forum see if there are any takers and a honcho.

I'd be interested in one. :-D

[floodgate]

duke76:

We actually DID have a 6-cav. Group Buy ".45PP, back in 2004, run by Ed Barrett ("elbStJoeMO" - haven't seen him lately); I have one I have not yet fired up I could LOAN you to try out; you'd have to do the "LeeMenting" and provide your own handles, though. PM me to follow up.

Floodgate

[Junior1942]

I'd go for a GB two cavity from 450 to 500 grs.

[4060MAY]

bullets to try
http://www.buffaloarms.com/browse.cfm/2,97.html

Before you buy a mould

[45 2.1]

Before you do this, try it this way. Get yourself a Lyman 457191 mold and cast them out of pure lead. Use a Lee push thru sizer of 0.454" diameter and size them. Patch them with two wraps of 9 lb. onionskin which should have a thickness of 0.002". This will give you a patched diameter of about 0.462". Lube the patch with White Lightening or 55% beeswax/45% vaseline. Carefully size and bell your brass so you can seat this without tearing the patch. Seat the patched boolit to the top lube groove over your prefered powder (SR4759 works very well here). Crimp the case neck lightly into the space where the paper sucked into the grease groove, be carefull not to cut the patch. This should throat engrave the patched boolit when chambered.

[rhead]

There was a run of those on ebay last year . No grooves, .448 dia., double cavity, 515 grains and 420 grains with my alloy. Lee should still have the data for cutting the molds.
I bump mine up and then size back to .451. The metplat gets improved in this step also.

[duke76]

Guys, thanks for your suggestions so far, I have looked at the link and dont have the Lyman mold suggested in an earlier post, so by the time I would purchase the mold from lyman or buy 50 bullets from Buffalo Arms with shipping I would already be close to the price of a Lee if we would get enough orders, I will run this in the GB forum and see if we get any takers, Thanks Todd

[Don McDowell]

Duke, I'ld strongly urge you to try various paper patch bullets, before going for a mold.
Montana Bullet Works offers a fair selection, and Midway carries some offerings from Montana Precision.
Paper patching isn't as easy as shooting grease groove, and you may end up not even wanting to do it after 50 or so rounds. Buying and trying a few before going with a mold is cheaper in the long run than buying the mold and ending up with it collecting dust.

As a last resort you may want to post up a wanted ad at bpcr.net, there is a fairly large number of folks that have tried the paper patch deal and decided it wasn't for them.
I had a fella offer me some molds, and swaging dies, just for the price of driving to his house and picking them up.

[John Boy]

Duke - try here ... http://copperheadcustomswaging.com/_wsn/page3.html
They will even wrap em for an extra 5 bucks

I've shot their bullets out to 1000yds with accuracy

And if you decide PP'ing is your thing, consider the Pioneer Products adjustable mold with the original Sharps designed bullet

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd220/Meadowmucker/Misc/PDRM2819.jpg
Fred Leeth at 937-833-2865

[wonderwolf]

DROOLLLLLL :-D

let see what we have here, 2 bad its way too long for LEE to cut out. I would really like one of these for my sharps. How round were the noses on these? I look at the design and I think its a bottom pour but that does not make sense, and I look at the mold John Boy posted and its a partial FP. I'm just wondering why they designed it RN and make it FN?

[Idaho Sharpshooter]

well, I shot at the Quigley(again) this year and there were a lot more PP shooters. I would suggest buying Randolph Wright's book before you jump off the bridge. Original rifle ammunition and PP bullet boxes from Sharps, Remington, Winchester, et al seem to suggest (for a .458" caliber rifle) that the mould produce a bullet that mikes .440"-.442" as cast. They patch them up to .450" (bore diameter) and just seat them about .180" deep over the grease cookie and over wad card. That seats all but the .180" in the case into the rifling, and keeps fouling down over a string.

Rich

[John Boy]

Wolf, somewhere in history, original Sharps PP bullets got mixed up to be round noses. Here's a chart of PP bullets that Sharps made and published in a pamphlet. Nary a round nose to be had. Note the 2 different 2.1 flavors (powder and bullet weight). That's why I had Pioneer Products make me the adjustable mold

http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd220/Meadowmucker/Misc/SharpsChartofBullets-1.jpg

The round nose diagram that you posted is Dan Theodore's 'Sharps' bullet and it is 550gr. Original Sharps PP bullets for the 2.1 were 400 and 420gr. Only the 2 7/8" was 550gr

Other gun companies made round nose PP bullets. Here's some:
http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd220/Meadowmucker/Misc/OriginalPPBullets1_11.jpg

And here's some 45-75 caliber PP's that I made from the Pioneer mold for my '76 Winchester ...
http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd220/Meadowmucker/Misc/45-75PP.jpg

[windrider919]

Duke76

I too would be interested in a GB for a two cavity mould ( 6 cav cast lots but are too difficult for me to handle ).

Especially if we could get two different weights like one cavity of 400gr and the other 500gr.

I see a lot of PP bullets with hollow bases but flat base shoots well too and would be OK by me.

FYI: Some PP loads I shoot with wads and ocassionally a wad will stick in the hollow base and cause a flyer which is another reason I would prefer a flat base

[wonderwolf]

John boy, thanks for the clarification and for the pictures. I've looked through lots of my old rifle books by sharpes and others and they don't talk about the bullet design so much as it was simply paper patched. I think I'll settle on an adjustable pp mold someday. Right now I'm using a rapine mold for 501gr and 405gr paper patched bullets they fall at .446 and I patch them right up to .450 for my sharps and trapdoor but the trapdoor needs a new chamber!

[BrentD]

JB, the drawing that was posted was from Paul Jones and Dick Gunn who drew from an orignal Sharps long range bullet. Gunn had a bucket of these that he gave away to folks, including myself.

If you look in Grant's first book of singleshot rifles, you will see beautiful 1:1 photos of orginal Sharps cartridges which include many round nosed bullets including the 550 long range bullet.

Brent

[John Boy]

Brent - I humblely stand corrected. Thanks for the information
And looks like I have another book to buy!:-D ... Dixie Gun Works has the best price - Done

[wonderwolf]

:coffee: ...back to confusion I guess :drinks:

[wonderwolf]

Whats the name of the book you refer to? is it "Still more single shot rifles"?

I'm confused as to the sharps poster then, why are fp bullets depicted?

[BrentD]

No it is "Single Shot Rifles". It was his first book.
Brent

[duke76]

Thanks guys, if enough of you are interested we still may be able to get something worked out, Todd

[mommicked]

I don't know if this would interest you, but I've had good success patching bullets dropped from a lee .45 lc pistol bullet die. The Lee 300 gr .452, with a double wrapped patch of tracing paper, lightly lubed with axle grease, and loaded over IMR 3031 has done well for me, though in limited testing I'll admit. Very accurate over light loads too.

I have also patched larger Lee bullets, .457/400 gr and .459/405 and /405HB as well, though these may need sizing unless you use very thin paper. I like common tracing paper; I got mine from Michael's craft store I think.

These molds are affordable enough you could try them to see if you like patching before going on to a full blown custom mold. I'd try the 300gr Lee .452 if you don't mind a light boolit.

[EDK]

Read Randolph Wrights LOADING AND SHOOTING PAPER PATCH BULLLETS, A BEGINNER'S GUIDE and Orville Loomer's booklet...both available from Shiloh Sharps. THE PAPER JACKET by Paul Matthews will be available later this fall. There's a bit of information in Mike Venturino's SHOOTING BUFFALO RIFLES OF THE OLD WEST.

Orville had a copy of an original mould at the Quigley shoot and Venturino shows one in his book. There is no sprue cut-off plate on that two piece mould; instead there are nippers to cut off the sprue that are built in. FLAT POINT!

An adjustable mould (which is what you really will want) is a nose pour, again has a flat point. A KALYNUIK is a piece of machinist's art...and he duplicated the factory original boolit from Powderburnerr's drawing. There's a long and very detailed thread on his mould making somewhere back around January.

:Fire::redneck:

[wgr]

i have a rcbs adjustable pp mold cast a bullet out of pure lead at about 535 grains

[Don McDowell]

i have a rcbs adjustable pp mold cast a bullet out of pure lead at about 535 grains

Is that the same mold as they offer now? Do you have some pics of the bullet, and could you maybe start thread to give a bit more info on the bullet and how it shoots for you?
I've been curious about that bullet, but have not ran into anybody shooting it, so any info you could provide, I'ld sure appreciate.
Thanks:drinks:

[catboat]

1) buy a Lee .459-405 grain HOLLOW BASE mold (about ~$20-25).

2) buy a Lee .452" sizing die kit (~ $15?)

3) Cast your bullets with the Lee Hollow base .459-405 grain mold.

4) lightly lube bullet(even spary on Pledge works, or oil/lube, hair conditioner (water soluble), and size bullet (Lee sizing die kits fit on existing "regular" single stage loading presses. The large lube grooves are easily displaced/sized for reducing diameter. You don't need to "lube the grooves", just need to lubricate the bullet to slip through the sizing die.

5) double wrap the sized bullet (.452") to get .459" diameter PP bullet. Tuck/fold the end of the paper patch into the hollow base or, if you'd like, twist the tail tail, cut (with pliers/nippers), and tuck tail in hollow base of bullet (just like the feature a fancy mold has).

6) load and shoot.

http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpage.exe/showproduct?saleitemid=363401
http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpage.exe/showproduct?saleitemid=116429


Maximum benefit, minimal cost.

If you don't like it, you can at least use the Lee .459-405 HB mold in a 45-70 for an accurate, economical (no gas checks needed) effective hunting load. If you don't have a sizing die for the .45-70, you can get a Lee Precision in .457" and hone it out to .459-.460" and size this bullet in it for "regular" or "naked" bullet shooting. keep "naked bullet MV to ~ 1400 fps or less, so you don't blow the skirt. It's not an "1800+fps type of Elmer" bullet. No deer will out run it at 1100-1300+ fps MV.

[windrider919]

We have communicated a couple of times about a 45 cal PP bullet. I started the thread "like my cherry" in 'mould design' for a new style of PP bullet that had special needs because I shoot Smokeless, not BP so the bullet is launched different and needs different dimensions. Are you just shooting BP or are you using smokeless? I thought about a Lee mould but they take 6 months!!!

I thought you might be interested in how I modified an old Lyman cast iron mould I had. It was .357 BBWC, I removed the handles and sprue plate, mounted it in my mill vise and indexed / centered on the existing hole. I then drilled with a regular drill bit of 7/16 to a depth just short of the bore riding section of the 45 bullet i was making. then, changing tools, i step drilled the nose area, never going too deep to be past the ogive. Then I changed to a metric endmill that gives .449 and 'cleaned up' the sides of the hole on the straight section of the bullet. I counted on the fact that the hole is always larger than the tool used. I then took a previously prepared die grinder tool and using lots of lubricant, dipped it in and out , washing away the fine shavings so it would not clog until it was a deep as I wanted. It casts a 433 gr bullet that has a very nice ogive. Usual cast dia is .451, and it PPs nicely. Just make it deeper for more weight.

I made my nose tool by mounting a 1/2 inch die grinder rotary file with a pleasing nose shape in my mill. Obviously it was oversize so I mounted a right angle grinder to the mill table and locked it 'On'. I brought the table sideways until the grinding disk just touched the largest dia of the rotary file. I ran the mill backwards so the the grinding disc and the file were turning in opposite directions, this increases the Foot Per Second of cutting speed but the reason is it tends to grind concentrically and not eccentrically / egg shaped {same principle as a barrel boring machine}. I moved the quill shaft up and down, moving the table sideways a couple of thousandths after the grinder had stopped cutting to make a new pass, letting the grinder cut away the teeth of the file until I had an OD of .450. All the radius /ogive of the rotary file less than .450 was untouched, and so when i ran it down into the mould blocks it was just tight enough not to chatter. On the mould there is an barely perceptible step between the bore riding cylinder and the nose.

Run it through the lee .45 die and PP and shoot(s) great at regular PP velocities. But still slower than i want hence the above mentioned design of which I am awaiting the new mould as if it were Christmass.

[EDK]

"On the mould there is a a barely perceptible step between the bore riding cylinder and the nose." This should also give you an index point for patch length on the boolit.

I've been loafing and have not done much with my KALYNUIK mould for my 50/90. Paul Matthews' book THE PAPER JACKET shows some handy stuff. (The book has gotten popular...scalped up to $60+...will be re-released by Wolfe Publishing in the near future.) I bought a plastic cutting board (at Wal-Mart!) and cut a groove in it with a table saw at work for a patching jig; now I need to cut patches and make some more marks on the board. Then it's just aligning the patch and boolit and rolling some up. It will sure beat "eye balling" for consistency!

:Fire::cbpour::redneck:

[montana_charlie]

I look at the mold John Boy posted and its a partial FP. I'm just wondering why they designed it RN and make it FN?

Wolf, somewhere in history, original Sharps PP bullets got mixed up to be round noses.

If you look in Grant's first book of singleshot rifles, you will see beautiful 1:1 photos of orginal Sharps cartridges which include many round nosed bullets including the 550 long range bullet.
Unless a guy wants to reproduce an old design for 'traditional' reasons, I don't see why it makes sense to worry about whether 'old' bullets had flat or round noses. A shooter who finds the bullet with the best BC should get the best performance at all distances.

Toward that end, I keep following the genesis of Dan Theodore's 'Money Bullet' nose.
It was used for the 'grooveless' design that Dan was pushing for a while, then reappeared on the grooved, mini-grooved, and micro-mini grooved slugs that came along last year.

It was in the mini-groove style that Doc Lay used it to good effect in his "Money Rifle", so that named it the 'Money Bullet'.

It is now being used in a PP version, and BACO makes a mould to throw it in .446".

Remember, it is the 'nose' that is being transferred from grooveless, through grooved, to PP.
It happens to be a round nose, and is somewhat smaller at the tip and slimmer in the ogive than more 'traditional' shapes.
It has performed well in all of it's various 'costumes', and requires less elevation than competitors. That fact seems to indicate it actually does have a better-than-average BC.

I can understand a desire to shoot a 'Sharps' bullet in a 'Sharps' rifle, but (unless it's 130 years old) the interior dimensions of the rifle only bear a passing similarity to the dimensions that the 'old' bullet was designed to work in.

Considering what modern thinking can produce in a bullet design, I would only accept a flat metplat in a nose pour mould.

CM

[leftiye]

Not to cast any aspersions, actually the opposite - The mold drilling process that Windrider outlines can leave a slightly (to very) rough bore. Using the second drill to remove .010" helps, and finishing with a reamer is better (and so on with polishing bring up the rear). But my actual point is to say that this roughness may be a big plus in keeping paper patches in place in the boolit, including during firing. Ogives can easily be drilled in even the same step by forming and resharpening the nose of a drill. Paper patched molds are therefore the simplest molds to make!

[EDK]

Unless someone is duplicating the one piece adjustable length moulds like those shown in one of the Paul Matthews' books or my ancient spiral-bound LYMAN cast bullets books...must have been tapered all the way up?...any adjustable length paper patch mould will be a nose pour. The original SHARPS moulds illustrated in Mike Venturino's SHOOTING BUFFALO RIFLES OF THE OLD WEST and the replica that Orville showed me at Quigley (He has some really neat toys!) were nose pour without a sprue plate...the end of the moulds were nippers to clip off the sprues...not exactly a precision piece of equipment.

The KALYNUIK mould that I got from Powderburnerr is a nose pour, but there are a lot of options if you order directly from Red River Rick himself. Some of the computer technologies are helpful in that area...wish I knew more about them.

Maybe someone could enlighten us how small a pouring hole/meplat you can go to and still produce good boolits....you'd really have to run the mould and alloy hot with smaller diameters!

:Fire::cbpour::redneck:

[windrider919]

Leftiye is right, there are faint tool marks on the sides of the bullet cast in my home-made mould. And just as he said, these micro groves seem to help the patch stay on. When i fire a regular smooth sided PP I get confetti and the largest piece of paper is a little strip that was the tail. When you looked at them SOMETIMES you could see where the PP had slipped and the rifling would not line up with the crease from forming the tail. With the 'rough' sided bullet there is no slippage shown on the spent PP.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
The only reason to care about the slippage was that the smooth sided bullets had more flyers. That led me to believe that the patch was causing them. There is also a slight indication that blowby and gas cutting happens with a 'slipped' patch too

A couple of individuals have said that a rough sided bullet will have increased drag. However, when recovered, the undamaged rear portions of the bullets are nicely smooth. I think that the passage down the bore with the PP sizes the bullet slightly, ironing out the tool marks. Again I believe that the critical time is the first instant of firing when the bullet starts forward into the rifling, then the patch need help to stay in position, after that the patch cannot go anywhere.

[leftiye]

Maybe Cream O Wheat filler behind the boolits to reduce damage to the patch? If the pressures are high enough (lower the softer the lead), then the boolit should obturate as the pressure curve reaches maximum and "iron out" the bearing surface of the boolit. With a straight sided spitzer design with a short nose, this obturation should cause no deformity, and the short nose will not slump (with pressures within reason). The paper patched boolit being groove diameter (for smokeless) and the paper being quite compressible, engraving into the rifling is facilitated, probly reducing the defornation prior to the boolit being entirely inside the bore (to maybe none?). The picture with black powder paper patched that are literally inserted into the bore before firing is even better in this respect, though they have to contend with the black powder pressure wave from the explosion.