Hg#38 ness safety bullet

[barrabruce]

Well it’s middle of winter with a global drizzling rain and a mere 21.6 *C
I though since I’m miserable I may as cast some bullets and organise my moulds.
I’ve got into a groove of casting 308403 bullets and 0.310 cadet bullets which I use as cast and hand lube and load when at the bench shooting.

Thought I’d try the ness safety bullet mould as it has been a challenge.
It has proven to be a challenge with the big pins.
The penta and small hollow point no issues.

Well I took my best-est straight edge I could find and used my finest emery paper about 1500 grit.
Chucked them up and polished the tapered pins and just broke the nose point a tad.
Ran the back of the pins in the mould halves and used my diamond hone to take off any abnormalities.
Heat blued the pins in some used motor oil

Took my time getting any tinsy winsy ,nick ,burr, edge , I could feel or see as I assembled it.

Heated up the pot and mould and went for it.

Was doing well.
Probably 15 casts in and I had a sticky bullet.
Carefully plucked it out of the open mould with mosquito forceps.

This time I put a drop of spruce plate lube in the cavity of the bullet and then reinserted it onto the pin and rotated worked it a bit.

Seemed to fling off bullets for a while and then had to re -apply more lube.

Mould got up to a Temp and my cadence must have been right as it started to work ; well like a normal mould.

Then disaster struck.

Who woulda thunk it!

The pin seem to be jammed open and I could get it back into it’s seat.

I gave up and down tools before I did something I would regret.

Heated up another mould and used that for a while till I lost my attention span.

It it appears that the tiniest drop of lead must have splashed up and hit the pin and drawn it into the two pin holes that guide the point form.
After disassembling it and cleaning a small tiny wee strand of lead came out.
It’s back together nicely again for another round.
Bruce 0 mould 10. Ha

So I ended up with probably 50 or 60 bullets to play with.

Never know I may learn to use this mould yet.

Haven’t perfected it yet but getting somewhere with it.

287703

Some how I have lost all my info on this mould and articles from the 50’s-60’s what ever I had in a computer crash and my Google fu seems to be weak as I can’t locate any now.:killingpc

Anyone care to wizz some of it over the ether to me?
I’d be very grateful if you did.

Anyway take care out there!


Bruce.

[Forrest r]

Don't have any info on the h&g #38 molds/bullets

But I will say that the mihec h&g #38 mold I have is one of the hardest I've ever used to cast bullets. Those long hp pins are extremely hard to keep up to temp. I ended up casting 2 or 3 sets of bullets with it and then putting it on a hot plate and casting with another mold. Then is 2 or 3 minutes casting another couple sets of the h&g #38. Then back to the hot plate.

[barrabruce]

Thanks forrest r that sounds like a logical solution to the beast.
I may have to set something up and do it that way too.
Will get a bit of a pile going after a while as well.
Thnx

[beagle]

I borrow GeorgeXXXs mould every couple of years and run a bunch. Never had the problem. They're worth the time and effort in accuracy. If somebody don't come up with the data in a couple of days, PM me and I'll dig it out. Got it all on a flash drive....somewhere./beagle

[fc60]

Greetings,

I did find this in my archives...

#38 - .30 Caliber. Ness Safety Bullet. Gas check base, two round grease grooves, no crimp groove, long
straight parallel-full-length nose. Very large hollow point, which tapers to within .100" of base of bullet.
Designed to reduce ricochets. "See June 1935 and August 1936 issues of American Rjfleman" "See Young
(P.A.). September, 1941.

Cheers,

Dave

[barrabruce]

Thnx.
I took out my latest offerings to the range and had a bit of a blast to see what they could do in my 30-30.
Sadly ,No exploding milk jugs or anything.

I used the same load as for my pope bullet and blasted away.
I finger lubed them and breach seated them .
287732
50 yards changed the from a wad on powder to a wad at case mouth.
Shows a difference. Some yawing.

287735

Still shows some tilt at 100 yards not too bad.

287733

I tried some reversed as in hollow base just to see and at 50 looks o.k.

287734
At a hundred yards they were losing it.

Could have been many factors but I thought they went well enough for no load development and not the best cast bullets.
I thought I could have rubbed a bit of lead off into the bore with the long bore nose section bumping up or maybe not.

I was getting yawing with the pope bullet as well.
The conditions weren’t bad for shooting and not too windy.probably only 10 knots.
I may need to up the charge a bit more to,make things more stable.

Don’t know what I could shoot with them yet but I’ll keep working on it.

Surprised me they shot just as well as they did at one hundred yards.


Bruce

[Forrest r]

Seeing this thread reminds me that I need to cast more ness bullets.

Never really got them to shoot accurately @ 100yds in a 2 groove bbl'd 03-a3.
A ness bullet that has been cut open exposing the long hp.
https://i.imgur.com/ZqOpZIV.jpg

The 03-a3 setup for prone using the cast ness bullets.
https://i.imgur.com/iguC7ZK.jpg

Typical 100yd groups with the 03-a3 after sighting in @ 100yds.
https://i.imgur.com/BVC5Pw2.jpg

At 50yds the ness bullet shot tight groups in the 03-a3
https://i.imgur.com/q9jnyp4.jpg

I made a bump die to shape the nose of that ness bullet to match the leade of a match 308w bbl. Did 10/15 round test loads with the bumped bullets. The reshaped bullets showed promise but that's all the further I got. Need to cast more ness bullets and hit the range.

These holes are from that 2400/16gr load @ 50yds in that 03-a3 into wetpack. Wetpack is a 12" bundle of newspaper soaked in a cooler full of water overnight,
https://i.imgur.com/zIQrwf7.jpg

I've used these bullets on several groundhogs, total devastation!!!!

[barrabruce]

Looks good.
Nice holes
I may try making a nose form die too and see what happens.
It could just collapse the nose on impact instead of blowing up.
Wonder if filling the nose with lube etc would help expansion.

What I should ask to make a nose form die would I have to lube the grooves and make a die to size and form the nose in one go as in the inside would have to be the shape I want ended up plus enough length to get it all in there and sized first?

A push out pin on the top for getting them out?

Cheers

[Forrest r]

I made the nose forming die copying the lyman 450 sizing dies. The thru hole was .298" as was the ejector pin. Then I used a 3/4* throating reamer on the nose forming die. I set it in the .298" hole until it bottomed out and marked the reamer and then ran the reamer 1" down into the .298" die. The end result is the hp nose of the ness bullet is bumped down enough to to allow it to not only fit into the tight match bbl. I can seat the bullet so that the shoulder is now where it's supposed to be, out in the free bore of the chamber.

A taper pin reamer will work to make bump dies.

I actually use this bump die quite a bit. A lot of times when I pc bullets the bore riding nose becomes too large so into the bump die they go. As do some of the bullets I cast simply to get the bullet out further in the case. The 308w has an extremely short neck and a lot of the long bodied cast bullets end up with their bases/gc's in the boiler room when seated.

The ness bullet doesn't need to have the lube grooves filled (reinforced) when bumping the noses down. Other solid nosed bullets do that are cast out of hard alloys.

As for the top punch in the lyman sizer, they can be flat or concave like the 1 I use. It aid's in trueing the gc on the bullets base. I made a concave top punch that rounds the edges of the gc making the bullet easier to seat.
https://i.imgur.com/LPn6FPn.jpg

Anyway bump dies are easy enough to make and they open a new world for casters to be able to tailor their bullets to fit their firearms along with trueing the gc's at the same time/same stroke of the handle.

I also made a bump die for a herters 9-ton swaging press using the same .298" hole/ejector diameter. Used the same 3/4* reamer to the same 1" depth & did head to head testing with the lyman 450 vs herter's 9-ton.

There was no difference in accuracy between the 2 bump dies with the 8/9 bullets I tested.

[barrabruce]

Thnx
I had to see how a Lyman 450 sizer worked to figure that out , but I got the gist of it now.
I have a loading press somewhere and when I get another bench I’ll set it up.
Haven’t got round to it yet.
Now if I was making up a barrel then it would be nice to have a pound dies for seating made with the chamber reamer and a sizing / modifying bullet die as well.
Wow thinking of the possibilities now.
Priceless.

I fired up the stove again today and cast some nicer bullets but I still need more heat to get it to work consistently.
When I did have it all hot enough the mould worked like it should have.
I maybe up for an upgrade.

[uscra112]

Somewhere I have the American Rifleman issue with the original Ness article. Pre-WW2 I'm almost certain. Only two things I can remember are that he cast it of a high antimony alloy, and it wasn't very accurate.

[Forrest r]

Thnx
I had to see how a Lyman 450 sizer worked to figure that out , but I got the gist of it now.
I have a loading press somewhere and when I get another bench I’ll set it up.
Haven’t got round to it yet.
Now if I was making up a barrel then it would be nice to have a pound dies for seating made with the chamber reamer and a sizing / modifying bullet die as well.
Wow thinking of the possibilities now.
Priceless.

I fired up the stove again today and cast some nicer bullets but I still need more heat to get it to work consistently.
When I did have it all hot enough the mould worked like it should have.
I maybe up for an upgrade.

To reshape the nose of the bullet all's you need is a throating reamer to make a bump die. Or like you said use the throat part of the chamber reamer.
After making the herter bump die I did some testing. 1 of the tests was casting up some lyman 311413 out of soft 8/9bhn alloy. The top bullet is as cast and chambered in a 308w match bbl. The bottom bullet I over swaged in the bump die to get the shape of the bump die. Huge difference in how much/how long the land engraving is between the 2 bullets.
https://i.imgur.com/vo4UgGe.jpg

I also have an Egan bump die (30t/1.5*) laying around that was designed to be used in the lyman 450 sizers. The Egan die is 1.58" long with the opening/top hole being .316" tapering down to .285 at the bottom. The Egan bump dies were primarily made for the mx3 bullets like the 1 I posted in post #9.

Another bullet I need to cast and do testing with.

Glad you're getting the ness mold sorted out. Mine is by far the hardest mold I've ever used to make good bullets with.

[barrabruce]

Somewhere I have the American Rifleman issue with the original Ness article. Pre-WW2 I'm almost certain. Only two things I can remember are that he cast it of a high antimony alloy, and it wasn't very accurate.
I though he went alright to least a hundred maybe more.
There were three articles and one was about some of the different things they tried.
Can’t remember properly thou.
Some what how they ended up with it in the end.

I have read of the Egan moulds and chambers.
Seams pretty nice set up.
I have studied his catalogue. Hmm nice.

Hope you have more success with yours as well.

I’m not sure if I attempt to make a die it would be usable.
I think I’d make a d-reamer but need a mill to cut it in half properly or mount a grinder on a lathe.
Preferably some one else’s..
Cheers for now

Bruce