carbine molds

[Butternut86]

In your all opinions. Who do you think makes the best all around .50 cal bullet mold. Im tryen to find one mold that will work good in all of my carbines. I was hoping that someone cAn give me so insight. Im a fan of Lyman molds mostly. so any recomendations would be great!!!!


Butternut.

[RaiderANV]

Kinda ah hard ta answer this one not knowin' all your carbines and their calibers.

We'll assume they are .50's and all size the exact same. Lyman make the 515213 which is the best all round bullet for the shooting we do in the N-SSA.

[Butternut86]

Raideranv-

All my carbines are .515 where do you recomend purchasing one of them molds? Also how is the 515139? i found that on lymans sight i believe.


butternut

[RaiderANV]

PM sent

[Rebel Dave]

The Lyman 515139, is a good mold, lots of Smith and Maynard shooters use it. I shot it in an original Smith, for years, with very good results. You can use pure soft lead, or slightly hardened, with 2% tin, in a breach loader carbine (not muzzle loaders). Try it with 35 grns of 3f. In tubes that do not have the reduced capacity, use about 10-15 grns of creme of wheat filler, on top of the powder. Good luck, and let us know how it turns out. That is a kind of common mold, someone on the board might chime in with one for sale.

Rebel Dave aka Dave C.

[ms3635v]

I shoot an original Smith Carbine and use the Rapine .520 350 grain bullet sized to .518. The Smith I am using presumably saw little use during the war as the bore is near mint. So, after trying different loads and different bullet diameters, I found that a bullet sized to .518 with 28 grains of 3f in the black plastic (full capacity) tubes gave me the best results. An important point to remember is that wartime Smith carbine ammuntion was manufactured using .520 diameter bullets. I have several fine examples of original Smith cartridges that were sold after someone broke open original packages of cartridges and these bullets measure .520 in diameter. Even the dug specimens in my collection measure .520. If you look In Dean Thomas' "Round Ball to Rimfire", Volume II, pages 226-246, there is plenty of excellent information on the ammuntion. In three representative examples in the book, bullet weights are listed at 367, 346 and 352 grains resulting in an average bullet weight of 355 grains. I believe that my success with Rapine's 350 grain bullet is because it is in the same weight range as the original bullets manufactured for the Smith carbine. You might want to try bullet diameters one or two thousandths larger than .515 diameter. By the way, the same bullet produces excellent results in my Maynard Carbine which I really prefer over my Smith.

Mike S. 3635V
Co. B, 1st PA Cavalry
MA Region