Arsenal Mold, Which Top Punch?

[damnesia]

I'm new to casting so please bear with me. I'm having a hard time finding an in stock mold for .257 ~87gr. I see Arsenal has some available that are 85gr and that's close enough. I use a Lyman 450 to size and lube, and NOE and Lyman tell you the punch die for a given mold. Arsenal doesn't say anything about it and I'm having a hard time getting ahold of someone there to ask. Hoping someone here can educate me.

Thanks.

[rintinglen]

Welcome to the madness!

When you don't know which punch to use, the best thing to do is to go to the NOE page for your caliber and look for the boolit whose nose most closely resembles yours and order accordingly. But if you already have a punch in that caliber, often you can use hot glue to slightly modify your existing punch to allow you to use it until you can get what you need. Grease the nose of the boolit you want to use with Vaseline or some similar lube. Put a small dollop of hot glue in the cavity of the nose punch and then push your lubed boolit into the glue to form it around your boolit and hold it for a moment to allow the glue to harden. It will get you by until you can get the right one, or you can just heat it up, remove the glue and start over.

If you are considering the Arsenal 257-312, 85 grain FP, NOE Makes the similar mold, 260-86-FN-D4, and the top punch for them should be the same. But it is a blessing that Al Nelson at NOE makes so many top punches.

[damnesia]

Thanks for the reply. The 260-86-FN-D4 is what I actually want but NOE site says they're out of stock, as is the top punch. Maybe I'll call them tomorrow and see if I can get info on when they'll be available again. My guess is that it's not a super high demand mold.

[rintinglen]

If Al doesn't have one at NOE, Midway USA shows one Lyman 420 top punch in stock, which should work for the 258-312. (But it's more expensive.)

[Kraschenbirn]

I take Rintinglen's solution a bit farther, using the same technique for making permanent nose punches with glass bedding compound instead of hot glue.

Bill