Help identifying mould

[BIGOX]

Dose anyone recognize this mould? Is this an adjustable wadcutter or is this for making cores to make your own j words? 44-45 is stamped on one side of the mould. Handle is thin. The box it came in had 44 slug written on it and the old tag read 44-45cal. I'll put some calipers on the bullets once I get back to the shop. Any help would be appreciated.
304618
304619
304620
304621

[Winger Ed.]

When you measure the diameter--- it will tell you which one it is.

[Bent Ramrod]

I think those were the core moulds that Herter’s sold for their swaging setups. You could get a .22, a .38 and a .44/.45 slug that would fit in the corresponding half-jacket. Weight, of course, was adjustable.

[ascast]

^^^ what bentramrod said Lyman also made them

[Reg]

Herters core mold for their swaged half jacket bullets

[rintinglen]

^^What he said.

[BIGOX]

So the core inside the mould measured at .380. That doesn't sound right to me but I know nothing about Swaging. Anyone have any insight?

[Bent Ramrod]

The “half-jacket” was like a thick gas-check, with maybe 4 times the depth of a regular gas check. You dropped the lead slug into the jacket and squeezed the assembly together in your loading or swaging press to form the bullet.

The slug was smaller in diameter than the inside of the half-jacket (or, for that matter, the normal jackets used for the swaging of jacketed bullets). You made up the weight with length of the slug.

You could use any diameter lead slug or wire that would fit into the jacket, but the longer and skinnier it was, the more fiddling you’d have to do to feed it into the die, and the greater the likelihood of air being trapped as the lead was swaged to form. So, typically, you’d have a ~.175” diameter cavity for .22s, a .32” cavity for .38s, and a .38” for .44-45 calibers.

Bullet swaging was all the rage in the 1950s-early 60s, with all kinds of developments, like half-jackets, zinc washer bases, copper driving bands and so forth getting written up in the gun magazines of the day. The main driving force seems to have been the Magnum pistol calibers, particularly the .357 Magnum, which in full-house loadings with cast boolits was a notorious barrel leader. Most of these innovations did not stand the test of time, as they didn’t solve the leading problems, despite the infomercial articles’ claims.

All that’s left are the curios from the period, like your core mould, the boxes of Speer half-jackets seen occasionally on the used market, and the Herter’s press-mounted swaging dies I’ve found now and then at gun shows.