Big barrels, small molds

[drinks]

I have a couple of rifles with large groove diameters and seems all my molds drop small diameter bullets.
Tried Beagling, can't get enough increase and makes the already oval bullets even more so.
Decided to make a reamer, same profile as the driving bands and the diameter I wanted the bullet.
Turned a piece of rod down, cut flutes with a mototool and a diamond cutoff wheel.
As the molds are aluminum, no need to harden.
Aligned the reamer with the driving band, slowly turned the reamer with pliers, while slowly closing the handles. When I could turn the reamer by hand ,I stopped, then repeated for next band.
Results are a .435" bullet that has no measureable, by me,at least, out of round and is exactly what I wanted.

[SharpsShooter]

Great advertisement! Where do we send our moulds to and what is the turn around time?:-D Do you accept WW as payment??

:mrgreen:

Seriously, if I tried it......I'd make paperweights out of what I do have. Glad it worked for ya!

[Buckshot]

..........That's called innovation with a dash of daring! Glad it turned out well.

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

[Bucks Owin]

Hey that's great! Can your own moulds be far behind?!? ;-)

Dennis

[drinks]

I did another mold today and ran out 300 bullets.
All molds drop bullets at .435", just smoked. When I sprayed the molds with graphite release agent, the size went down to .433", still fine for my .431" barrel, but I am going to get the graphite out.
Here is a picture of the reamer and a bullet.
I am shooting these in my Handi, which is now a .445 SM.
Shot it for the first time yesterday, really good shooter and very mild recoil, just a pussycat even at 1800fps with a 310gr fn gc.

[Buckshot]

.................Thanks for posting the photo. Looks just like a keyway cutter. It's a chore to cut something like that as it's so easy to get the teeth of unequal length. so you get chatter which does the cut no good, a-tall. Altogether fine work on your tool.

Now you need a sign: "Drinks' mould resurrection, and fat-ifying emporium."

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

[drinks]

I have been into fat-ifing for a number of years, just now started doing it to molds.
Of course, the mold was already .430", so I only had to remove just over .002" of aluminum to get the size I needed.
I tried lapping, could not get all bands same diameter and it became even more oval, so I gave up on that one.
I have done 3, .44 molds now and all came out the same size.
Now to make one for .30 and see if I can get something my .314" M44 can put in less than 2-2 1/2" at 50 yds.

[NVcurmudgeon]

drinks, great idea, and greater worksmanship. If all else fails, the Lyman 314299 drop boolits of .314+ and shoots excellently in a .3085" Springfield, .309" Krag, and .3138" No. 4, sized .310" or .314" depending on which rifle. Next up, a Lyman .312" sizing die and giving it a try in my "new" M1891 Argentine.

[drinks]

Loading up some of the fat bullets, I found the crimp die was trying to size down the bullets.
The whole point of the exercise was to have , big, fat bullets that would fill my MG barrel.
So I went to the Lee collet crimper.
I use a .308 collet crimper on several cartridges, just put the correct spacers over the case to make the crimper close at the correct height.
For this, I used my .44-40 collet crimper, a flared .445 SM case would not go in the crimper part of the die, so I pulled it, chucked it up and polished it until the .445 SM case would just enter, then turned a spacer equal to the difference in case length and tried it.
Works fine, no sizing of bullet, still works on .44-40 and now also crimps .44 mag. too.

[klausg]

drinks-
I'd have to agree w/SharpsShooter, though if I tried it I don't think I could even make a paperweight out of it. Great work, kinda reminds me of that necessity being the mother of invention stuff.

-SSG Klaus