1st casting of new Mauser bullets

[CowboyTutt]

Hey guys, went to SoCal to see family, Jim Williamson and Old Savage. Jim and I casted bullets using my new custom moulds for my 71/84 Mauser. The bullets are very similar to the bullets made from Montana Precision Swagging but are from a top pour mould, of a harder alloy and use an appropriate smokeless powder lube instead of a black powder one. They weigh 485 without lube and are sized to 446. Hopefully they will shoot as well as the Montana bullets but without the severe leading I get with them.

Jim wasted no time replacing the steel washer with a copper or brass one, grinded off the knurls off the top screw so the molten lead would not stick to it, and is working on maybe some more modifications for me.

Unfortunately, as the moulds got hot, the petroleum based lube they were sent with (and which I had cleaned out the night before in hot soapy water) began to "sweat" out of the two single cavity moulds. We cleaned them twice with brake cleaner, but were still having some trouble getting a clean casting, so we added some tin to the wheel weights and that helped them pour better. Also, as time went on, the moulds purged themselves of whatever remaining lubricant was in the pores of the moulds.





















The moulds were made 1 thou over over to allow for slight changes in size due to type of alloy used so the overall product is not so pretty but they should shoot well.

This is the first time I have cast bullets and was very glad to have Jim teach me. Long skinny bullets (these are 1.25 inches) are more difficult to cast but in the end, we got it pretty well sorted out.

-Tutt

[CowboyTutt]

One other problem that revealed itself with these moulds was the top latch screw. It kept over-tightening on one of them, and the latch would not close and thereby compress the mould halves tightly together. It required frequent hand adjustment. A set-screw or maybe locktite would have helped. -Tutt

[J35]

Can I ask who made the molds?

----J

[Mescalero]

Tutt,
You have come late to the game?
Many of us, if we did not cast; would not have been able to shoot.

[earlmck]

That's a good looking batch of bullets you fellows produced there. And some nice pictures, too. A range report to follow?

[CowboyTutt]

Mesc, I've been able to purchase the bullets I needed and since my loading bench is in the house, I did not want to cast my own bullets within it. It would be different if I had a garage or shop maybe.

The moulds are a quality item, they just needed some tweaking. There was some sort of filling material in the latch screw holes to keep the screw from tightening, but it failed on one of the moulds. Jim made new screws that don't have threads long enough to tighten further. Problem solved.

Purging the moulds of lubricant and adding more tin to the mixture helped the lead stay molten longer to fill the cavities and solved our problem.

We are doing a hardness test and recalculating to see if the Blue Dot load is still appropriate but we think it will be.

-Tutt