Lyman 2-piece epoxy joined bullets......

[Harry O]

Did the casting today. First picture is the box the moulds came in:

The second picture is the moulds on handles. The one on the left is the base (cast hard). The one on the right is the nose (cast soft). The "hollow-base" attachment is on the left-front and the special nose punch for sizing it is on the right front.

The third picture is the parts after casting. The left is the hollow-nose-base. I have tested the hardness at Bhn 18.5 to 19.2. It weighs 82gr. It drops from the mould at between 0.358" and 0.359" OD. The middle is the base and the nose just fit together without sizing, glue, or anything else. They fit together very closely and it took VERY little glue to bind them without squeezing out all over. The right is the nose. I have tested the hardness at Bhn 5.4 to 5.6. It weighs 85gr.

The last picture is of the assembled 358624 compared with a 358429. Although some people say that they are the same, they are not. The nose part of the 358624 will not fit in the 358429, so no casting a soft nose bullet using this piece.

More to follow.

[Harry O]

Casting the nose portion was easy. It is only a single cavity, but I was still able to cast approx 150 in 45 minutes. There is no reason that Lyman couldn't ahve made it a two-cavity to speed things up, though.

The base was something else. I was using a high antimony mix that I had previously used for casting 375167 plain base bullets for a rifle. It did not work as I wanted, so I had a bunch of them left (about 6# worth). I was not able to get that mix to cast in this base mould. I ran the heat up as far as it would go, but it still would not cast. The first picture is some of the rejects. The type on the left did not fill out at the top. The ones on the right did not fill out between the hollow-pin and the lube groove.

When I could not get it any hotter, I started adding tin. Two ounces helped, but there were still too many rejects. I added two more ounces and it was just enough that I started getting some keepers. It took about 45 minutes before I got my first keeper.

The next picture is what I use to keep the center pin hot when checking the last bullet, knocking off the sprue, opening the mould, and tapping out the bullet. I did not make this for this mould. I have used it for some time with the other hollow-base moulds I have. As an added bonus, it also smokes the pin when heating it. I found it at a garage sale. It is heavy a heavy aluminum base with three holes for candles. I have a heavy wire wrapped to hold the pin and can bend it to get the point right over the candle flame.

Even with all this heat, I was only able to cast about 75 bases in an hour and a half. Now that I know what needs to be done, I can probably get that down to one per minute, but I don't believe that it will ever be any faster than that.

[Dale53]

I am not a particular fan of the soft point cast bullet. I have had excellent results on both small and large game with solid cast SWC's. Shooting a .44 magnum with a Lyman 429421 at 1200-1300 fps will drive a 3/4" hole through both small and large game (end for end if necessary). I don't really need more than that. Quick kills and quick casting.

But that is just MY opinion.

However, I did find your post interesting.

Dale53

[Harry O]

Once I had enough for a test, I started experimenting with sizing and lubing. I had to use a 0.358" sizer. The Ruger GP-100 I have has snug chambers and a 0.359" bullet (in this case, unsized) will not fit in it about half of the time. At first I tried the special sizing "nose-punch" that came with the mould. The first picture is of the lubrisizer with a base ready to be sized and the special punch in place. Another view of that special nose-punch is in my first post.

Sizing them this way was no problem at all. At first, I sized some of them without lubing them. Then I changed the nose-punch to the one used for the 358429. I slipped a soft-nose piece in (no glue) and tried sizing it. The soft nose bulged out around the nose-punch before I even got the base to enter the sizer. I stopped.

Then I tried placing a soft-nose into a sized (but not lubed base) and then ran it down to try to lube it. That worked better, but there was still a ring around the nose of the bullet under the nose-punch. Better, but not good enough. Then I changed back to the special nose-punch to lube and size them in one pass. No problems with that either.

The second picture shows what happened. The left bullet is a base and a nose pushed together just for reference (no glue or sizing). The middle bullet is the one that I tried that had a sized base and I used the soft nose to push it back in to lube it (see the bulge). The right bullet is on that had the base both sized and lubed with the special nose-punch. The nose was later inserted.

Next came the glue. At first, I tried two-part epoxy. There was no way to get how little I needed into the joint. The two parts do fit together fairly tightly. The glue squeezed out at the front of the base and got all over everything. Then I tried some"gel" super-glue. I backed down to only one drop. That seemed to fill the joint just right. I went back to the sizing/lubing machine to press down (very lightly) on the two parts until I could see the glue just peeking out. That seemed to square everything up and spread the glue evenly. One tube of glue gel was able to glue all 75 bullets.

The next thing is to load some and shoot them. I will be doing that this weekend. I can check to see if they are as accurate as the 358156-GC I have been using for some time. I will not be able to check them to see if they hold together after shooting for some time (will have to wait until the outdoor range I belong to dries out), but I think it is going to work.

The next question, is it worth the extra work to save 4 cents on a gas check. I think I can already answer that question. NONONONONONO. This is an AWFUL lot of work to get a bullet.

[Harry O]

I loaded up a bunch of them with 13.5gr of 2400 and a Magnum primer. I took 40 of them to the indoor range today to check for accuracy. The first 10 were used to get the feel of it and to adjust the sights to get them in the center. The next three 10-shot groups were fired for accuracy. Accuracy was not bad, but I was having some "unexplained" flyers.

Suddenly, the last shot in a 5-shot string felt like a squib load. I checked the barrel. No problems. Then I checked everywhere around the firing line. I found a nose piece laying on the floor a couple of feet in front of me. The last shot was 3" to 4" outside the rest of the group. The same thing happened later on. Both of them were on the last shot of a string. Evidently, the recoil broke the glue bond. I had some other flyers that did not feel like squib loads, but they may have been ones that had shifted, but not broken loose yet. Maybe JB Weld would work better, but I would think that would be even more difficult than the two-part epoxy I first tried and then gave up on.

I also brought 20 rounds of 358429 I cast with the same Bhn 18-19 mix I was using to cast the 358624 bases on Friday. It cast easily, unlike the base. They were every bit as accurate as my standard 358156-GC bullets, maybe a little bit more so (although there were not enough fired to tell for sure). However, with the amount of monotype needed to get that kind of hardness, a gas-check bullet would be cheaper.

Interestingly, both the 358624 and the 358429 had more felt recoil than the 358156-GC I normally use. The extra hardness (I use a Bhn 12 mix in front of the gascheck vs Bhn 18-19 on the other bullets) and the extra 10 grains are probably the reason.

I think this is a dead end. If anyone has any suggestions for fixing the problems with this mould, let me know.