I just designed a cast bullet that i want to have a mould made for. Its for a .44 mag and has a HUGE meplat (intended for deer). I am going to have my machine shop make the mould. The problem is that i dont know how much larger i should have the mould cut for. I plan on either pure lead, lead and tin alloy (1:10), and magnum shot with tin (1:10 or so). Also, can i buy die parts, like the spru cutter? I know i can buy handles, i just need the hole locations for them. I'm planning on having it made out of 6061 aluminum because we have scrape here at my shop (2x2x4 1/2). i would appreciate any suggestions and insight because this is my first time designing a mould. Thanks,

cyberhick

How big is your huge meplat?

Dan at Mountain mold is the best place to go to have your design cut. He takes care of many of those nagging little details for you and he has an on-line design program as part of his web page.

go here:

http://www.mountainmolds.com/

Sounds like a fun project, Cyber!

A lot of what you'll be doing is going to be at the bottom end of the learning curve, judging
from the questions you ask. If I were going to start such a project, I think I'd spend $15-$20
and buy a Lee mold to "reverse engineer" from Midway or eBay. That way, you could make
measurements of various alloy shrinkage rates, get an idea of how to align the blocks, etc.

You might also want to talk to folks who make custom molds to see if they could provide any
pointers. Dan at Mountain Molds (www.mountainmolds) and the folks at Lee Precision
(www.leeprecision.com) are excellent places to start, and they have lots of experience.

I vote with Oldfeller.
I've had two wonderful brass molds made by Mountain Molds. I have a 350 grain for the 405 Winchester and a 200 plus for the 30-06. Both cast faultless bullets. Both bullets are accurate out of my Winchester 95s
Jim

WOW, i just checked out the mountainmold.com and they had my bullet right on. Now i just have to try and get my wife to go along with spending $60 or so. My current machine shop will do it for me for free though. I also liked the mold that had the extra bullet nose for casting soft noses, i've been thinking about bullets with soft noses and that hit it right on. I just hope my bullet works. I wish i could cheaply make some of them and test them for accuracy before i went into making a mould. I'm not even sure it will work, it has a .400" meplat, which should put a big hole in deer, but wont penetrate as deeply as a Keith style.
Maybe i should ask the machine shop to lathe turn some, i dont know, we'll see. Thanks yall.

cyberhick

There is a cheap and easy way to make what you want. Get a Lee mold for ~$17. Take it to the machine shop and have the nose re-cut to the design you want. I did that with a Lee 240 gr swc mold, and ended up with a 330 gr rf design.

If you want the big meplat but not that heavy, don't lengthen the nose. It is by far the cheapest and easiest way to go, and the dia of the driving bands are already set. If you end up going a thou or two over on the nose, a sizer will clean it up.

Not to dismiss Mountain Molds, as he makes great molds, and is well worth the price to get exactly what you want. I'd also recomend the aluminum molds over the brass, as I've found the brass to be the most temperature sensative block material to cast with.

thanks Paul, thats a great idea. Makes me wonder why i didnt think of that, since i do that stuff all the time at work (i'm a tooling engineer working for a company with no money). However, i dont have a exclusive rights to all good ideas (just ask my wife). Thanks man.

cyberhick

arkypeter: tell me more about your 405 bullet? I'm all ears and very little hair.

I know what you were thinking, I've got access to a machine shop, I can make a killer mold from scratch. Considering the set up and fixturing time, making a one off mold is very time consuming. The lee molds aren't the greatest, but they are cheap, and easily modified.

What I do is first open up the peened over ends of the handle pins in the mold blocks. Drop out the pins and remove the handles. Then remove the sprue plate. You can lighten up an existing design by taking a facing cut with a fly cutter, but don't go too far, or there won't be enough metal left to hold the pivot pin for the sprue plate.

For changing the nose profile, chuck the mold in a 4 jaw chuck on the lathe, center, and bore to profile. I use 1/4" hss bits ground to shape, essentially a form tool. The tough part with this is being able to know when you've gone far enough, and not too far. It isn't a repeatable process for multiple cavities, so just do one cavity that way.

If you have a cnc mill, you could get a six cavity lee mold, much better design then the one and two holers, and cut the desired profiles. Also the 6 cavity molds allow longer bullets then the two cavity molds.

LBT also has a 405 350gr bullet that looks good, but I haven't gotten to the range to shoot them yet. Got 20 loaded. I got them from sandage@jscastbullets.com, planning to try them before I actually order my own mold.