I bought an old Atlas lathe a few months back and finally accomplished something with it yesterday!

I have a few factory Lyman and. Ideal HP molds and wanted to try to make one myself. I had a few ideas on how to do it, but luckily Glen spoke up. About having a chapter of his book about just that topic! I picked up a Lyman 358315 single cavity. It's a 215-ish gr round nosed gas check bullet. I figured, and Glen confirmed, it would be a good one to HP for use in my .35 Remingtons.

So, I turned a close facsimile of the bullet out of some 1/2" aluminum rod. I then clamped the stripped down mold around it and locked it in so it would spin with the aluminum bullet. Then I center drilled it and turned a pin for the HP. I still need to make a wood handle for the pin and add a stud to lock it in place, but it does cast some decent looking bullets! I'm going to load some up and test them out this weekend. If they shoot well enough, I'll be using them on a month for deer season.

What's the finished weight of the HP's?

Be interested in further reports.

Right at 200 gr as cast. I'm working nights this week, so I'll get some lubed and loaded and will have them with me in MO to shoot. I'm happy with the JSP's I tried, but would rather use these just out of personal pride! You guys are coming to the shoot, right? I'll have the whole family this time.

Melodie asked if you were coming. Looking forward to seeing you guys.

We're headed over Thursday morning. Planned on getting settled in and relaxing some and then heading to St Louis Friday for some sightseeing. We'll probably hit the zoo and maybe the museum at the base of the Arch. I remember going there when I was 12 or 14 or so and really enjoying it. Much more than the ride up the arch since I was afraid of heights!!! Looking forward to seeing you guys again. I'm sure Luke will be asking to shoot the old 39 as well!

Cool! I'm
Sure he'll appreciate it. I'm trying hard to get some ammo loaded up and figure exactly what I want to bring. If I don't get some paperwork back from the ATF soon, it will limit some of what I can bring!

Here are some results that I got from shooting the 358315 HP through a ~12" water bath, and into a bale of tightly packed dry newspaper (which tends to break off "petals"). L-R: 358315 sized and lubed, 1800 fps, 2000 fps, and 2100 fps. The recovered bases retained 100-110 grains of bullet metal. These tests were done with my original HP pin, which made a .110" diameter cavity, more or less the full length of the nose (~.500"). These results lead me to shorten the HP cavity to about .360", and .100" diameter, which retains about 125 grains after this test (but I don't have any pictures).

My pin went about .350" into the nose. It looks like yours are slightly flat nosed. Did you bore a bigger hole and have the HP pin form the bullet nose as well?

I'll try to get some pictures later.

....but it gets the point across (get it?). I made the HP pin out of 1/4" round stock, turned down to .200" for the meplat, then turned the pin down to form a tapered cavity, about .100" at the mouth and .360" deep.