Lyman 452626 A&B

B

Beagle333

New member
Has anybody got any experience with these? Supposedly, you cast a pure lead nose section and then you cast the body out of wheel weight or harder and then you can epoxy/glue or whatever the ultra-soft nose section down into the body of the SWC bullet. I'm thinking powdercoat would hold it down in there quite nicely.
Yes, it'll be slow. Yes, it'll be slightly aggravating. But I just wanted to play a little while with this piece of history and then I'll probably sell it off when the new wears off. But as of now, it's new and uncast and just waiting for me to have time to get out to the casting shed.

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Wow. Very interesting. Seems like a solution looking for a problem but non the less interesting. I expect a full report!
 
I remember when these came out, another approach to a soft nose hardcast bullet.

Trivia Alert:

One company made a nose mold. Cast soft noses, then drop one into a preheated full profile mold and immediately pour it full of harder alloy. You got a lot of solids from the preheat to shoot for practice.

Another outfit had a nose melting pot. It had a metering setup on its bottom pour.
Drop a metered glob of soft lead into a regular mold, follow it up with hard lead from your regular pot.

The old time muzzleloading slug gun target shooters did it the other way 'round. They wanted a hard nose to maintain its shape under firing acceleration and a soft body to obturate into the rifling under its paper patch. They were cast in halves, then swaged together to get final size, shape, and bond.
 
LBT makes those and calls them their soft nosed bullets. Although, they just use one mold instead of two.
 
would be interesting to produce a mold that gave you 1/4th of the soft nose projectile portion to give you a fragmenting multi-point carried forth and held together by the conical base...... - a sort of semi-frangible..... but would worry that such a thing would squib more often than it'd fire......
 
Lots of old time experimenters got split bullets by putting a piece of "banknote paper" in the mold. They adjusted the depth of the split to get the effect they wanted.
 
I remember when those moulds came out...Lyman as I remember. If my memory is still correct, the soft nose portion was meant to expand on impact (not fragment), whereas the hard lead alloy of the base was to allow higher velocities. Also, I remember that the two parts were intended to be epoxied together.
In all, I considered it to be "...an ingenious solution to a non-existent problem.", not worth the extra effort.
 
I agree with all..... it is not needed anymore, since it isn't a problem. I just wanted to experiment with it, and since I have had offers to purchase after I bought it, I do think I can get my 60 bucks back once I'm either satisfied with my experiment or frustrated with the effort. :)
 
It's always interested me that since the softer lead alloy would have a higher melting point and would be more dense (would sink in a puddle of the harder alloy) that they didn't just cast the soft point in its own mold and place it in the tip of the base mold and pour the hard portion in. No pins or inserts required. Perhaps it is too difficult to get the finished nose casting warm enough for the hard alloy without having it tend to deform and lose symmetry in the incoming metal flow.
 
I don't think the two pieces would adhere. 'Ever notice how if you get messy and accidentally splash some lead over your pile of cast bullets while you're filling the mold, you can just flick it right off the bullets with a fingernail after it is cool? I'm thinking that, anyway.
 
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