Lyman .457 cal. Mould Suitable for Whitworth?

[ead]

Hey guys,
Can I size a Lyman .457 bullet down to .450 for a Whitworth, or will I break the handle off of my press trying to swedge it down so small?

[Lou Lou Lou]

Try doing it in two stages. 2-3 thou each pass

[ead]

Try doing it in two stages. 2-3 thou each pass

Gosh Lou,
Maybe the cost of a custom .450 mould would be better than buying extra sizing dies!
Can anyone reccomend such a mould that gives great accuracy!

[Pat in Virginia]

Go to the Buffalo Arms website and check out their moulds for both PP and GG depending on what you want to do. You will find what you need. You want to look at the .42 to .45 caliber bullets of each type.

The Lee Shaver bullet and the Money bullet designs are proven designs. Lee has won many awards with his (but not in a WW) and Dave Gullo the owner of Buffalo arms has done likewise.

Two years ago, Dave won gold for the best aggregate in the LRML World Championships using his money bullet design. I believe, but am not sure, he was using the PP version. I like the long bearing surface on Lee's bullet designs and they conform to the recommendations of Whitworth.

http://www.buffaloarms.com/Products.aspx?CAT=4157 - GG Bullets


http://www.buffaloarms.com/.42-.45_c...s_pr-4161.aspx - PP Bullets

In either case you need to know the flat to flat diameter of your bore. Then for GG go .001 less.

PP gets harder because you have to decide are you going to do a double wrap patch or a single wrap "Chase" patch. ( I can tell you that Lee shot the single wrap chase patch this year at the LRML world championships in one of his George Ferriss repro rifles and he had the second highest aggregate score at the match.) Then you have to know how your paper behaves when you wrap it. The single wrap chase patch is pretty straight forward. If you subtract twice the thickness of your paper from the diameter of the bore then you will be close. Double wrap gets harder if you are going to wet your patch (which is recommended for double wrap). The paper will stretch if you do it right and the diameter of the wrapped bullet will be less than the thickness of the paper times 4 plus the diameter of the PP projectile.

The finished bullet should be at least .001" less than the bore size.

Have fun ,


Pat in Virginia

[Pat in Virginia]

Another though; if you are going to be a long range shooter, 500 plus yards, you are going to need sizing dies. You can size a double wrap PP bullet even after the paper is applied to make it fit if necessary. Go to George Gompf (Tennessee Bullet Molds) for the dies. We have worked together regarding dies in the range you will need. With George's dies, I have sized a .459 bullet down to .445 in one pass with little distortion to the finished product. For a Chase patch approach re-size the bullet itself and trim off some paper vertically on the patch if need be.

Pat

[ead]

[QUOTE=Pat in Virginia;37068]Another though; if you are going to be a long range shooter, 500 plus yards, you are going to need sizing dies. You can size a PP bullet even after the paper is applied to make it fit if necessary. Go to George Gompf for the dies. We have worked together regarding dies in the range you will need. With George's dies, I have sized a .459 bullet down to .445 in one pass with little distortion to the finished projectile.

Pat,
I must thank you kindly for taking the time to give me all of this great info.
It's everything I needed to know and more!

[Pat in Virginia]

ead,

There is one other thing I will add. Mike Owsiak is able to make a mold with bullets that drop at .446-.447 that can be sized down for a Chase patch or a double wrap patch. It weighs 530 grains as per the WW bullet and has a flat base which is superior as far as I am concerned. You should be shooting 70 to 90 grains of Swiss 1 1/2 if you want to repeat Whitworth's ballistics. He recommended 86 grains as I recall of Curtis and Harvey #6. Swiss 1 1/2 repeats those ballistics very closely. You should be using soft lead as it has to expand to fill the corners of the rifling and that's a lot for the WW style.

The nose of Mike's bullet is very close to the nose of Lee Shavers GG bullet as seen at Buffalo Arms. Send me a personal message with your email address in it and I'll send you Mike's contact information. If you do a left click on my name in the message header above you will see an option to send a personal message.


Pat