Lyman 311003 or 3113.

[hansumtoad]

Anyone cast with this mold and can share some of its idiosyncracies? Little itsy bitsy drive bands.... stupid thin base.... funky looking long tapered crimp goove... diameters all over the ballpark.

I've seen a lot of wierd shi... ah, stuff... over the years when casting, but nothing like this. This is the 220 grain version.

20:1 alloy at 750 degrees. Base mikes .3105. Drive bands 2 through 7 mike .306 through .309 with no rhyme or reason. Front band .311". Necassary to cast fairly warm to get fill without wrinkles as the mold needs to be cooled on almost every cycle to keep drive bangs metal from frosting and pulling back from the mold sides.

So, on to sizing... two shiny sized bands at .310 and a HUGE wide band of lube in between. Droppiing down to .309 and then to .308 still leaves a lot of lube smear... I dont get it.

Going to try some #2 alloy and then lino tomorrow to see if that changes anything.

Any thoughts, gentlemen?

[Echo]

I doubt if changing the alloy will be a success. My guess is that the boolit was intended to be hand-lubed, way back when it first came out. It looks like a Loverin that was waylaid by a cowboy action shooter. Lotsa luck...

[Bret4207]

A very, very old design. Not necessarily a real good one. Venting might be part of you issue.

[hansumtoad]

The thought behind the harder alloys was bigger boolits. Venting... hmmm, time to get out the Opti-Visor, Might be onto something there.

Really want to offer this boolit. Its the heavy version (220gr) that was designed for the Marlin 1893 in .30-30. Interesting story there.

[w30wcf]

I have this mold as well. I have 15 or so left from the last batch I made. I don't have any that have not been lubed/sized to .311". As I recall, it drops bullets that are about .002" out of round but all bands clean up when sized to .311.

I tried this bullet in w.w.+2% tin in my 1949 vintage 336SC. Partial keyholes were the result at 1,400 f.p.s. If I try to push it much faster than that the plain based bullet would leave lead in the barrel.

Since this design was available in several different bullet weights, I did take some bullets and removed the last driving band and grease groove bring the weight to just under 200 grains. Those shot pretty well at 50 yards @ 1,400 f.p.s.

That mold dates back to pre 1900 and is, in fact, shown in the 1897 Marlin catalog as being available in 5 different bullet weights from 158 to 219 grs. In that catalog, in part it says "These bullets when cast are .311 and are to be sized to .308"......

I think it is doubtful that anyone tried it in the .30-30 at the heaviest weight for if they had, they would not have offered it to the shooting public.

I have been thinking about having my mold modified to remove the last driving band and grease groove. At least that way it would shoot better........

w30wcf

[w30wcf]

These days we know better than to size them down before trying them first.

w30wcf

[9.3X62AL]

Venting might be an avenue to explore, and all that tin in Lyman #2 alloy might help with fill-out. At some point, the 1-12" twist found in most 30-30s and lower velocities (pressures, really) required by plain bases will combine to make long boolits destabilize in flight.

One of my answers to lowered velocity requirements in a given situation is to raise boolit weight at a given velocity to put striking energy back into the equation. All things have their upper limits, though--often brought on by another limiting factor that jumps out to bite us. No free lunch, as usual.