I bought used (made in 1999) one of those 3 in 1 mill/lathe/drill press machines this past winter and until the past few days had not used it for much except for making some V-blocks and cutting a couple dovetail slots for a muzzle loader. Then I decided I wanted to try paper patching some 45 caliber cast lead bullets and found that the bullet diameter for my rifles needs to be 0.438 before I wrap the two layers of paper. Well no one has an off the shelf mold or sizer die so I decided to try and make one. The link here has exactly what I made and actually made several different ones with different bullet weights: 540 grain and 600 grain flat sided pure lead bullets.
My Homemade Mold for an Ugly Paper Patch Bullet
The hardest part was making the cutter for the bullet nose and that took me several tries but I finally got pretty close to the shape of a Creedmoor bullet. So this week I plan to try them out to see if they will actually hit anything with my Gibbs muzzle loader.
08-31-2014, 01:00 PM
