Picked up a Lyman 4 banger Oldy?

[randyrat]

I happened to run into a Lyman 4 hole 358 soup can mold today(great shape)... It says on the mold 977 and 358 63(or 68) is this an old mold? I had to come home and try it out, it throws a nice wad cutter at about 150 gr .358 WC as cast.
I picked it up for $50 handles included. I couldn't pass it up.
I always thought Lyman mold had some secret 8-10 number on them, to be de coded. Is this an older one?
BTW... I can't tell which end(boolit) is up or down, i don't think it matters.

[MT Gianni]

The 35863 is a double ended wadcutter as you noted. It is a good shooter but I have no idea when the last production date was, I think it was well into the 80's. Gianni

[randyrat]

Thanks Mt G... Date dosen't matter anyway. I like the double sided feature, one dosen't have to look for the top or botttom.

[anachronism]

Usually 6 digits. The first three usually designated the nominal bullet diameter & the last three was the mould number. 358 063 was an old design that ran a long time, I forget when they added the "0" in front of the "63". Probably about the time they went to computers & that made them do it.

[BruceB]

The 35863 design was introduced specifically for the Smith & Wesson Model 52 .38 autoloader.

This dates the design to somewhere in the early '60s, which certainly may seem "old" to some of us....for myself, it seems like yesterday!

The numbering was indeed changed to 358063 some years ago.

The M52 pistols generally seem to have barrel dimensions close to those of the 9mm, possibly due to manufacturing them with the same tooling used for the 9mm M39. The M39 was the "base" upon which the M52 was developed. I find that sizing at .357" works well in our 52s, but the swaged factory wadcutters do very well too, and they're a full .358" or more.

I had a wildly out-of-spec 4-cavity 35863 mould which dropped bullets at .363", and I sold it to a fellow poster here who uses the fat little beggars in a .38 S&W revolver with considerable success. My present 358063 is in two-cavity format and gives me .358" bullets.

Being a double-ended bullet, it can be loaded with either end forward. I prefer NOT to see the sprue mark on my loads, so I seat the sprue end down. Also, lube is not needed in all three grooves at "target" velocities (800 fps), and I use only the bottom-most lube groove. If using less than all-grooves-lubed, the bullets should be seated in the same orientation in all rounds.....for example, my one-groove-lubed bullets are seated with the lubed groove rearmost.

This is a very successful and accurate design.

[HeavyMetal]

Think you lucked onto a good mold!

I have two of these 35863's and use them to feed my M52 Smith. Set up my Star to lube the center groove, since I use this boolit completely seated flush it made no difference to me which way they go in the brass, lubing the center groove just fit the set up for my 357 RCBS 150 SWC boolit with no changes.

Who says Stars are hard to set up?

If yours throws boolits in the 357 to 359 area consider yourself lucky! I went threw 3 or 4 of these before I found a pair that cast what I wanted, 359! As BruceB said the rejected molds cast 362 to 364 and sizing them down was both to much work and wiped out most of the lube groove!

[Le Loup Solitaire]

I too have been using this bullet for target work with a Smith M52. It was a single cavity. It casted at .357 with WW and I always ran it thru a .357 sizer (Saeco) just to get it lubed. It was necessary to put the lube in one groove only; I chose the bottom one. Putting lube in more than one made for more smoke, crudded up the gun and was not as accurate. I did eventually acquire a 4 cavity #258 made by H&G; it was in fact the same bullet and the H&G mold cranked them out with no more than a 1% reject rate..appearance and/or weightwise. The as cast diameter with WW was still .357 and as such they worked very well. Off the bench or with a two hand hold I could keep the group within 1&1/2 inches at 25 meters; the eyes were young then. I also used a lot of Military 38 special brass which was thicker and when doing that I had to size the bullets to .356 to avoid bulging those cases. I had no trouble with the .356's obturating; the accuracy was just as good. WW is not very hard, probably between 9 and 13. I found that the better accuracy for me was not with 2.7 grains of Bullseye, probably because of the increased depth of seating of the bullet to get the face flush with the case mouth and the absence of a hollow base. Instead I found that 2.5-2.6 grains of 700X ran the slide well, ejected well and gave excellent grouping. Recoil was light which was conducive to target work. There was never any leading and holes in the target were neat and square. As previously stated by Bruce B. it is a superior design and I enjoy shooting it to this day. LLS

[Buckshot]

http://www.fototime.com/3B773CE97D573A2/standard.jpg

............To be sure, BruceB's former 4 cav 35863 (2nd from left above) has found a home here producing wonderfull Foom Fodder for my 2 S&W V models and an Iver Johnson in 38 S&W. It does in fact drop'em at .363".

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

[TCFAN]

I also have a 4 cav 358063. It drops them at 358-359 from WW metal.

This is the only wad cutter that I have been able to use in my Marlin 1894C. I load them in 38 special case with the bevel out of the case and they feed just as slick as a round nose. I tumble lube with LLA.

I use 3.5gr. of Bullseye and they will cut one ragged hole at 25yds. They make a great small game load for this rifle.................Terry

[cabezaverde]

Buckshot,

Glad to see I am not the only one who uses LLA and regular lube sometimes.