Erik Ohlen Geo. A. Hensley #22 H.P. Conversion

[Texasflyboy]

This mould started out life as a George A. Hensley design #22 two cavity plain base mould. The Hensley & Gibbs ledger has this entry for #22:

#22 - .45 Colt. 250 grains. "Standard" design with plain base, two grease grooves no crimp groove. Noses has rounded curve to meplat. Note by TD Feb 2009 – This design appears to be Hensley & Gibbs interpretation of the original .45 Colt projectile.

This mould is in my personal collection, I purchased off of that auction site in the 1990's. Here is what it looked like before I sent it to Erik:

http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/22_12.jpg

One of the cavities had a small nick in the base, which I asked Erik to repair. The cost was .008" or so lost from the base driving band, but the result was perfect:

http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/22_13.jpg


I received the finished mould back from Erik today, here is the result after the conversion to the Cramer style Hollow Point style. The Pin dimensions were provided by Ed Harris & Erik:

http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/22_10.jpg


http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/22_11.jpg

This weekend I will fire up the pot and try some test casts and post the results to this thread.

The machine work in my humble opinion is simply stunning. If you're contemplating sending a mould to Erik I highly recommend his services.

[Edubya]

I cast about 600 HP .44 boolits tonight with a SAECO #445 that I got from Eric. It is my favorite .44 boolit. I don't hesitate to use them as paper punches. They cost as little as my 240 gr or 250 gr Keith when it's all done. I can cast 350 or more in an hour and they perform better than any other boolit that I cast for this gun.
I have three of his modified moulds and am thinking that I need to have him do three more.
EW

[358wcf]

Gents- I discovered Erik last summer, and have used his fine services on several occasions since- It is a true pleasure to speak with him on the phone- he likes to understand your desires and intended uses, then he gets down to work!
He's done hollowpoint mods to both rifle and revolver boolits for me, and removed a few gascheck steps as well- all done to perfection!!! He prefers to work with Lyman's old steel molds, calling it "butter steel" due to its machinability and resulting superfine surfaces.
He did a remarkable job enlarging the driving bands on my 375248 Lyman so I could size the boolit to fit the overly large bore of my 38-55, and added a HP to one cavity-- results are shown on his website, for this outstandingly accurate boolit-

Am I pleased with his services? You bet!! I hesitate to spread the word, hoping he doesn't get so busy to get "burned out", but he is young and energetic. Mold work is his hobby, and he is darn good at it-- Trust your needs to Erik, and you will be surprised with both the quality work (at a very modest cost!) as well as the outstanding service.

I recommend this young man's services highly- you will be pleased!

Chuck 358wcf [smilie=1:[smilie=1:[smilie=1:

[Bret4207]

My jealously is only exceeded by my desire to have several of my moulds done! Good for you and kudos to Erik! May I ask what the work ran cost-wise?

[358wcf]

Bret4207-
Erik lists all his charges on his excellent website-
Hollowpointmold.com
You will be pleased, to say the least!

358wcf

[Texasflyboy]

My jealously is only exceeded by my desire to have several of my moulds done! Good for you and kudos to Erik! May I ask what the work ran cost-wise?

For the above scope of work I included a $100 USPS money order. No invoice came with the mould. I did the math off the website ($45 per cavity, $10 per repair).

This one goes out next week to Erik for the same treatment:

102580


Tom

[square butte]

Are you able to reverse the pins and cast solids with this set up?

[Texasflyboy]

Are you able to reverse the pins and cast solids with this set up? Tom

Holy Cow. What a neat idea.

But no. One of the set screws interfered with one of pins so Erik had to make the pins differently. One of the top pins does not exit the block, its captured in the block. Can't flip them over.

But still a darn good idea.

I forgot to ask him to include a spare set of pins for flat points. Will do that for sure.

[smilie=2:

[Texasflyboy]

Had some time this morning to cast with the new Geo. A. Hensley #22 Cramer style hollowpoint conversion.

Decided pics were called for (even a movie too) as I went along with this (new) mould.

Here is the first cast:

http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/4.jpg


and what they looked like:

http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/6.jpg

After casting a few I realized I wasn't getting fill out in the center band so I let the mould come up to a higher temperature almost to uniform frosting and achieved good results with band fill out:

http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/9.jpg

Didn't take too long to get a nice pile of hollowpoints:

http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/7.jpg

The mould seems to work pretty well. Erik advised that the pins may need to oxidize a bit to work best, and this was borne out through the casting session. The more I cast, the better the mould performed:

http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/10.jpg


The size as cast was right at .454", and after running them through the STAR sizer, they looked usable right at .452":

http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/1.jpg


Here are some as cast before loading in .45ACP, the .45LC cartridge is next in line for loading so it was included for comparison purposes:

http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/2.jpg


Here is a sample weight:

http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/3.jpg

Here are the loaded and ready to go rounds:


http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/1212.jpg


Larger photo of above (http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/12.jpg)

The ring on the loaded round is caused by the seating die on my 550B. I am polishing it out today to create more of a rounded area in the seating stem to hopefully cure this problem.


And finally, here is a link to a roughly 35MB movie of me using my big casting pot and the mould for those who want to see how the Cramer mod works. I noticed I had to be careful to ensure that the sprue plate was moved out of the way before tapping the hinge to dislodge the as cast bullets, if the sprue plate isn't moved out of the way, the bullets simply drop onto the sprue plate and can get jammed in that area. Moving it out of the way cures the problem:

Link to Movie:

Click here for Movie (http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/66.avi)

[Glen]

VERY neat idea! And yes, Erik does outstanding work. I had him do a standard HP/cone-point modification on a single-cavity Lyman mould that makes that same bullet. However my cone-point is somewhat smaller diameter, and not as impressive as yours. I like how you made the design a good compromise weight/design for both .45 Colt and .45 ACP. Mine is specifically set up for the .45 Colt. Please let us know how it shoots and expands. I suspect that you will be highly pleased.... ;-)

[Texasflyboy]

I like how you made the design a good compromise weight/design for both .45 Colt and .45 ACP.

This was a three way effort. I just provided the funds and the mould. Ed Harris provided the pin specifications and Erik did the work. I had the easiest job. Ed's pin specifications took into account lever gun use. He has a .45 Colt caliber rifle and the pin specs allow the Hollow Point cavity to rest around the preceding primer in a lever gun magazine. I don't have a lever gun, but you never know. I do have a 625 in .45 Colt along with a few SAA's in the same caliber. Expansion at 800 fps was the goal.

The pictured bullets are merely models. Models meaning they are pretty, but completely useless for anything other than pictures. The alloy is straight wheelweights. I only have the one monster pot and its currently filled with WW, my goal is to loan this mould to Ed and have him cast me some 20:1 bullets with his lead. Key point being his lead. I keed Ed, I keed!

Ed's been doing some pretty amazing work with hollowpoints. He seems to have cornered the market on .32 caliber moulds, designs, hollow-points, brass, Bullseye, and small pistol primers. He has hollowpoints and spare pins in a dizzying array across calibers.

And they work. I had a handful of .32ACP 90 grain-ish hollowpoints that he fired into water that mushroomed beautifully. Same with 30-30 loads, .303, 7.62x54R and 45ACP. All work. All expand beautifully.

He's responsible for giving me the hollow point bug. Along with that other guy on the West coast who likes hollow points.[smilie=1: