The mail lady left me a couple of new molds yesterday. I knew they were on the way as I had just looked at the tracking and saw that they were out for delivery. She usually gets here right after noon, so I had the melting pot up to temp and ready.
The molds are a work of art as usual, this being my second and third mold from this manufacture, so I was not to surprised at how they look. But I still marvel at the precision of the CNC cut molds.
I got a five hole 311008 for my 30 carbine ruger, cause I have lapped out my old Lyman 008 in an attempt to get it to drop big enough to feed my buckeye ruger 32-20 that has a bore of .313". So I needed it to drop around .315 to be able to size down to .314 to fit the throats and bore. That made it pretty big to size down to .310 for the carbine, but they still shot very well........the carbine shoots ten times better than the 32-20 no matter what bullet or size I have tried.
The other mold, and the reason I'm posting this here on the PC forum, is a 356135 HTC. I have reamed out a few molds before to make them slick sided. These were molds that were in bad shape already, or I did not like the bullet for some reason, and then a Lee 358125rf 6 hole that I got just for that very reason. But this is my first "store bought" slick sided mold purposely made for coating.
See, for Christmas, I got a new EAA witness match in 38 super. And I fully intended to mostly use the Lee 125 rf in the new gun. The modded mold turns out a perfect PC type bullet, and works great in my Rossi 92 in 357. I took out the grease groove but left the crimp groove.The final weight runs around 133 grains with the extra lead and PC added. So I though BINGO, that's a perfect 38 super bullet I thought...........nope, it did not work out too well. The radius of that bullet just did not work right. It would hit the rifling way too soon, which made me seat it way to deep. It functioned ok, but took up to much case volume. The super is usually loaded with the bullet loaded wayyyy out yonder. And most 9mm bullets seem to be made to do this with a much shallower radius and a longer nose.
Also, this witness had the rifling starting real quick in front of the chamber, or so it seemed. It worked fine with jacketed bullets intended for 9mm, but I shoot cast about 99.5% of the time. And then, I find that the throat is pretty tight on the diameter so that if I had a .3585 (bore is .357) bullet loaded to where just a tiny bit of the full diameter section was in front of the case mouth, it would not chamber half the time.
So I looked for a new mold and decided on the noe. I liked the reduced diameter of the nose section. I figured that after adding the PC it still ought to chamber right, and it does. Running the slugs through a .357 sizer, just barely sizes a little of the bullet. So then when I add the PC, it comes out just right And I only have to size one time, and that's after PCing. That saves a lot of work, and effort.
But I did do a little work on that witness's chamber. I made a lap and moved the start of the rifling forward a little, and opened the leade section just enough that a .359 bullet can be used if I decide to try that. Now I can load them all the way out to the max OAL .280" that the round is suppose to go to.
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