.38 special cast ultra high velocity

[Doc Hollywood]

Call me a mad scientist, but when I was perusing the lee bullet mold catalog I saw a .357 diameter 105 grain semi was cutter mold. It occurred to me that mold would be pretty neat with a gas check, in .358 diameter, and with a deep hollow point. Maybe cast in wheel weight alloy and weighing somewhere around 90 grains.... So I called my machinist buddy to discuss this and he told me to find a custom bullet mold maker, but if I couldn't he would make the mold for me. It seems to me that at moderate pressure this bullet could be driven inordinately fast and expand violently upon contact with anything at all. I have two boxes of the old Remington 95 grain 38 special that I won't shoot because they are not available.
My questions are these,
Is this idea nothing but shenanigans and tomfoolery thus not worth pursuit?
Does anybody know a custom bullet mould maker?
Does anybody have any experience with similar skullduggery?

[RWJ]

Perhaps you could find a used Lyman 358093, which I believe is a 125 Gr. GC pointed bullet mould, and just have it hollow-pointed for a cheaper amount; obviously, the size of the cavity could determine the final weight.

No idea as to the merits of the idea.

[BigMoneyGrip]

Have you checked over at castboolits? Those dudes are serious about some bullet casting. They should be able to point you towards a mold maker, also.

[colt_saa]

Mountain Molds Cast Bullet Molds

They have an on-line design program to make anything you can imagine except hollow points

My favorite hollow point molds come from Mp-molds

He is in Europe and does many group buys for Castboolits Forum. There are always a few over runs for sale on his website.

[LoboGunLeather]

I have cast and loaded many thousands of bullets in both .38 Special and .357 magnum, and have used them for practice ammo as well as hunting everything from rabbits to mule deer. I have used wheel weight metal exclusively for cast pistol bullets for about 40 years.

My molds have included the Lee 358-105SWC, Lee 358-150SWC, and Lee 358-150SWC-HP. Using wheel weights these molds produce bullets weighing 100, 144, and 138 grains respectively.

On small animals (up to the size of coyote) all of these bullets will pass through completely at any velocity. On mule deer the 150-SWC bullets will frequently penetrate completely, while the SWC-HP bullets at .357 magnum velocities will penetrate nearly all the way through the chest cavity, even when striking a rib on the entry side, with recovered bullets typically retaining 120-plus grains weight, the hollow cavity nose portion pretty much destroyed, and very little expansion (if any). Wound cavities are pronounced, which I attribute to cavitation caused by hydraulic pressures induced by the impacting bullet.

The short story is that I consider such cast bullets to be plenty effective on critters up to about 250 lbs. at reasonable handgun ranges, but I do not attribute the effectiveness to expansion.

For effective expansion on soft-skinned critters a softer lead alloy will be required, and that places some limits on load pressures and velocities. Even if your revolver and loads result in the higher velocities successfully with such bullets I am reasonably certain that such hollow point bullets will fragment rather than expanding and retaining sufficient weight for good penetration.

Have fun playing with this idea, but I suggest using production molds available at reasonable prices to test your theories before investing in a custom mold on an assumption of results.

Best regards.

[Engineer1911]

Why not try a "cheap" solution? Buy a box of 9 MM / 380 hollow point bullets in the 85 grain to 100 grain range. I tried this in the mid-1980's with less than accurate results. If the bullet expanded, it went straight to parts and pieces -- no mushrooms recovered. When it didn't expand, it could have been reloaded with minimum effort.

I was shooting "brisk" loads in 357 mag brass. Enjoy your new adventure. A Key Point: 45 ACP starts at 0.451 diameter and doesn't shrink.

[venomballistics]

You no longer need a gascheck design ... Hy tek coating and powder coating both will do anything you want without issue.
In fact, you can probably go to pure soft lead with the coatings and do well without the HP too.
Thats what I'd try first if I didn't have a lathe.

[SLT223]

Originally Posted by venomballistics

You no longer need a gascheck design ... Hy tek coating and powder coating both will do anything you want without issue.
In fact, you can probably go to pure soft lead with the coatings and do well without the HP too.
Thats what I'd try first if I didn't have a lathe.

x2. Less labor and cost. Easiest answer first. Try coated slugs. You'll most likely never think about gas checks again.

[venomballistics]

Originally Posted by SLT223

x2. Less labor and cost. Easiest answer first. Try coated slugs. You'll most likely never think about gas checks again.

that was my exact thought.
I'm more than happy to set up the lathe, do a one off and take your money.
But if you can solve it with an off the shelf solution, you're just better off.

[Forrest r]

Huge hp's don't do very well in small/light bullets that go extremely fast. They tend to implode with minimal penetration. I tested some 110gr hbwc's turned around to make a huge hp in 38spl's and 357's. They didn't do very well.



These plain old 110gr wc's did allot better with their huge flat meplat.



It's hard to beat 158gr hp's in a 38spl.



For what it's worth:
Fast bullet ='s small hp
Slow bullet ='s large hp

Same bullet, different hp depth and size.



Another same bullet for the 44spl/mag's. Just different hp depth, size and shape.



A "NESS" 30cal 125gr hp, it is designed to implode/anti-ricochet for garden pests. A bullet cut in 2 exposing the massive hp.



That same ness bullet shot into wet newspaper @ 50yds, there wasn't enough of the bullets left to amount to anything. 1800fps cast out of ww's.



You can tell what a bullet/hp was designed/intended for just by looking at them. An extremely rare cramer 25a mold with hp pins.



This is hat a cramer 25a 158gr hp looks like that were cast from the mold pictured above. A small shallow hp designed for hot 38/44's or 357's.



Right now I cast and swage 15 .357/.358 different hb and hp bullets ranging from 110gr to 170gr to use/test in 10 different firearms with bbl lengths from 2" to 10" in length.

Good luck

[Doc Hollywood]

A lack of penetration is what I had hoped for I was thinking of these for critters at the farm. Nice post! Great pics! Where did you get all of your hp moulds? I cast bullets myself but no handgun bullets yet have been looking for a good .358 hp mould.

[Forrest r]

Been collecting them for awhile now. There's a bunch of ways to get where you want to go. Sounds like a basic hp mold and a drill press would suit your needs.

Or a drill press and a common bullet casting mold. The drill press is to make simple bullet swaging dies.

A piece of round stock with a hole drilled in it and polished/sanded out to the size I wanted, .314". All done with a simple $50 drill press. A bolt chucked up into the same drill press and ground/sanded to a point. The washers and more drilled scrap round stock fine tuned the depth of the bolt/hb punch. Cast some 93gr 30cal bullets (lee 93-2r) and then sized/lubed them in a lyman 450 sizer. Then put them in the round stock/.314" die body and inserted the hb punch (ground bolt) and either hit it with a hammer or use an arbor press ($30) to turn a rn bullet into a hbwc. Nothing more than scrap steel, a $.25 bolt & a $.05 washer can turn a cast bullet into an extremely accurate hbwc or an extreme hp.



A 60* countersink will easily open up any hp into what your looking for. Either a hand held or used in a drill press.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...nQ9z7a5RoawgZA

Center drills also make excellent hp's that will fit your needs.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...reblbffu08ickw

There's always more than 1 way to skin a cat.

[Doc Hollywood]

Interested in loading the hbwc's backwards have you managed to get them to stabilize?

[Bob T]

Originally Posted by RWJ

Perhaps you could find a used Lyman 358093, which I believe is a 125 Gr. GC pointed bullet mould, and just have it hollow-pointed for a cheaper amount; obviously, the size of the cavity could determine the final weight.

Looked for one of these a while back for .357 Mag. Few and far between and expensive. Saw a 2 cavity go at one auction site for $145.00.

[Doc Hollywood]

I'm looking to start castin handgun bullets because I have an almost unlimited supply of good quality virgin lead from the 1920s

[rwsmith]

Google "custom bullet molds" and several will pop up. Some offer a very wide selection of materials and services. Depending on how much casting you do and how you want to control your heat. Some I've looked into have a huge catalog of molds they've already made and if you don't find it there and do need a custom mold, the prices (to me at least) were extremely reasonable. I can only guess that they use CNC machining and all they have to do is enter a simple cadd drawing into the unit and let fly.

[Forrest r]

Yup, there's allot of custom mold makers out there. But the question is, do you really need a custom mold for something you might use/shoot 50 rounds a year with????

Custom hp molds $100+
Having a mold hp'd $100+

I'm lucky enough to have the tooling to make my own hp pins & hp my own molds but I still have $2500+ in custom or original cramer & h&g hp molds. That's not counting the original simple lyman hp molds.

Do yourself a huge favor and buy a 4 or 6 cavity mold of a known performing design and cast a pile of bullets. Then mod the bullets you want hp'd.

Heck, even forster case trimmers have hp'ing attachments to be able to hp any cast bullet.

[venomballistics]

Could be that the OP is overlooking an easy button option.
One thing I have been playing with is a .312 round ball shoved through a .309 die, powder coated, and sized again.
A 30-30, 308, or 30-06 will kick it into play as a brilliant pest control / screw around load that might cause one to retire their rimfires