Just another mould..or two.

[Distant Thunder]

Kurt - That Sage mold of yours is the one you loaned me and I cast up a bunch of them. I shot my best midrange score with my .44-77 using that bullet even through I was having a lot of issues with the then newly rebuilt rifle. The trigger was giving me fits, I didn't yet have my pistol grip on the rifle and there were a number of other things that needed work, but that bullet flat out shoots in my rifle. It's a good one.

Then there is my Lodi bullet I use in my Hepburn. I first made that mold somewhere before the 2010 shooting season for my .45-90 Shiloh. It was cut at 1.460" long and about .443" diameter. That is the bullet I won my first two matches with at Lodi shooting paper patch bullets and many more after that.

When I made the switch to my .45-70 Hepburn the bullet was too small in diameter for that barrel, so I opened it up some and then some more. I also had to shorten it to 1.440" long. In my .45-90 with 105 grains of powder and over 1400 fps it shot very, very well. In my .45-70 with only 83 grains at a little under 1300 fps second it just didn't seem to hold up as well. That little difference in the length made it work well in any kind of wind and the increase in diameter made it fit my barrel better and I have won many more matches with it in that rifle. The thing that bothers me is that all the remachining has left a mold that isn't exactly pretty and doesn't cast real pretty bullets. Shortening it left the nose way to long for the OAL. So i have searched for a mold to replace it. None I have tried will shoot as well out to 1000 yards as that old bullet does. There are so many reason it should not shoot that well, but it doesn't seem to know it and it just shoots. I guess when a bullet works it works and you just have to learn to live with it!