Echo
12-06-2009, 03:02 AM
You gotta love a woman who shoots guns, works on airplanes, and was a bosun on a tall ship at one time. I have a girl friend (well, she's a girl, and a friend) that meets those specifications. I coached her in pistol shooting. She had worked for the Sheriff's Dept at one time, and still had her Model 19. I reload .38 Specials for her. She medaled in the Senior Oly's a couple of years ago.
I saw a Lyman 358432 4 cavity mold on eBay, and won the auction. I think I paid about $50 for it. It is a WC design, with a bore-riding section in front of a crimp groove. I thought it would be interesting to see if I could get these to shoot in my 15 or her 19. So I fired up my Cute Little Thing (Potter 3-pounder) this AM to cast a few, just to check it out. Cleaned the mold w/carb cleaner & toothbrush, dried it nicely, and got started. The alloy I used was WW/Lino, 50/50.
The first few batches went back into the pot - still stuff in the cavities. when dropped back into the pot, they smoked. But after about 4 sets of 4, the boolits started looking pretty good. After a couple more batches, they were looking danged good! So good that I decided to go ahead and cast a few more - then a few more. I ended up with 19 pounds of 153 gr. boolits. I got my exercise getting up, walking over to the alloy stash, retrieving a couple more ingots, repeat every 15 minutes. The mold, and alloy, were so well behaved I just didn't want to stop! After the mold settled down, I only threw 4 (FOUR!) boolits back into the pot as culls, and I was being fairly critical.
Man, it is FUN when thing work out right! Those boolits look GREAT! Sorry, no picture yet.
I saw a Lyman 358432 4 cavity mold on eBay, and won the auction. I think I paid about $50 for it. It is a WC design, with a bore-riding section in front of a crimp groove. I thought it would be interesting to see if I could get these to shoot in my 15 or her 19. So I fired up my Cute Little Thing (Potter 3-pounder) this AM to cast a few, just to check it out. Cleaned the mold w/carb cleaner & toothbrush, dried it nicely, and got started. The alloy I used was WW/Lino, 50/50.
The first few batches went back into the pot - still stuff in the cavities. when dropped back into the pot, they smoked. But after about 4 sets of 4, the boolits started looking pretty good. After a couple more batches, they were looking danged good! So good that I decided to go ahead and cast a few more - then a few more. I ended up with 19 pounds of 153 gr. boolits. I got my exercise getting up, walking over to the alloy stash, retrieving a couple more ingots, repeat every 15 minutes. The mold, and alloy, were so well behaved I just didn't want to stop! After the mold settled down, I only threw 4 (FOUR!) boolits back into the pot as culls, and I was being fairly critical.
Man, it is FUN when thing work out right! Those boolits look GREAT! Sorry, no picture yet.