McLemore Pope Universal Mould

[STP22]

I have several decades of The American Rifleman to thumb thru and recently came across this mould in the April 1984 issue (page 54).

Anyone here use one or seen one? I wonder if he he found a favorable market, even if for a few years. At the time he was in Hebron, Indiana.

Scott

[Buckshot]

I have several decades of The American Rifleman to thumb thru and recently came across this mould in the April 1984 issue (page 54).

Anyone here use one or seen one? I wonder if he he found a favorable market, even if for a few years. At the time he was in Hebron, Indiana.

Scott

..........If you can't post a pic, can you tell us what it looks like, how it functions if different from a run of th emill mould, or what is special about it?

..............Buckshot

[STP22]

It has 3 features that differ from the typical nose pour mould...

Pivoting T-slot for the sprue cutoff plate, it cuts the sprue when the handles are opened

A spring operated bullet ejector that pushes the cast boolit away from the left block when opened as well

The block halves are designed to to accept different 3/4 inch diameter round cast brass mould `inserts` for each boolit design

The write-up included the mention that members of the American Single-Shot Rifle Assoc. had used this mould in plain base designs with some success.

At $200 for a complete mould with one insert, and $50 for each additional mould insert back then, it doesn`t seem a stretch to assume that there was a rather small market for it.

HTH?

[Bent Ramrod]

I remember the Rifleman mention, and the cost. At that time, if memory serves, a new Lyman single-cavity mould was $25.

I was able to look over and open and shut one of the original Pope versions of that mould once at a gun show. Sticker shock and amnesia have dimmed my memory of what the seller wanted for it; $750 or $950 or something like that. They really are a terrific piece of technology, but the difference in cost of even the reproduction version over the standard mould makes them kind of impractical, if all you want to do is cast boolits with it. But for the caster who has everything...

The hinge was a coupling of concentric ridges in the one handle and concentric grooves in the other, and it had, as stp22 said, oversized holders that held a cavity that was turned in a split brass cylinder, really nicely hand-vented. It would certainly never get out of alignment, but might take a while to heat up.