? on vintage mold

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One of the old classics - -

That mould and the bullets it throws have served several generations of .44 revolver shooters very well indeed.

Elmer Keith wrote of the development of the bullet in his classic book, Sixguns. he indeed originated it with the square-bottomed lube grooves, and was a bit miffed when Ideal marketed it with rounded bottoms.

I was never an advanced-enough shooter to appreciate the difference in the two types.

larry3screws - - Compliments on your use of the buffalo nickle as a size reference with the old blocks. Just the right era!

Also, please forgive me for inducing a bit of thread veer into your topic, just for general interests, and as a safety precaution . . .

Be advised - - this mould usually casts bullets of about 250 gr, rather than the later-standard 240 grain weight. It also has a somewhat longer bearing surface than the 240, IIRC. In short, if you've been using heavy powder charges you've worked up under the shorter 240 gr bullets, you might want to back off a ways and work up.

CAUTION: The included hand load information exceeds currently-published MAXIMUM LOADS. It is provided for reference only. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! Neither THR ownership nor staff assume any liability for damage or injury to persons or gear resulting from use of this information. Particularly, two old classic .44 SPECIAL loads espoused by Keith have been determined in recent years, to GREATLY exceed "safe" pressures. One of these, the 250 SWC over 7.5 gr. of Unique, was one of my favorites for many years, in a variety of revolvers. I never "blew up" a gun, but I now understand that I was kind of "riding on the ragged edge" of safety.

Such old loads as I still have are CAREFULLY reserved for use in a .44 magnum. There is no profit in straining the .44 Special-chambered revolvers.

The other classic load . . . Well, even with the above CAUTION note, I can't bring myself to post some of the .44 Spl loads with 2400 powder that I, and many others, used to regularly spew downrange. There was an excuse for this, back when the .44 mags were either scarce or not-yet-extant. Not today.

We now return you to the thread originator's primary topic. Thank you for your patience.

Johnny

Square VS Rounded lube grooves?

I am wondering if Elmers idea for the more squarish flat bottom lube grooves were for the higher velocity bullets he was developing and wanted the squarish ones to hold more lubricant or to hold it better and that his higher velocities would somehow lessen the effectiveness of the old style lube grooves?

Historically the purpose of the original soft lubes beginning with animal fat were to melt and coat weapon barrels to stop the leading which ruins accuracy in subsequent shots. When pistol target competition became popular, pistol forcing cone deleading became important also

The Lyman style and later luber sizers were invented to be used with soft lubes and they did not require heat to lube hundereds of bullets with a turn of the handle. During Elmer's time,the bullet lubes used railroad greases, automotive greases and stiffer consistency candlewax and beeswax.

Could Elmer have felt that the rounded lube grooves would leave too much lube in the forcing cone and not in the barrel so that a larger capacity lube groove was needed or one that would hold the lube better?
California Saeco co bought the Cramer bullet mold co in 1947 and developed their bullet designs I feel with influence from Elmer and their use of only one lube groove.

The older the bullet design Re Lyman the more lube grooves they had for when the animal fats were used.

When picking up bullets down range it seems to me that most if not all of the harder lubricants stay on the bullets.

Fitz is, as always, spot on with the caveat on powder charges for the .44 Spl. When I bought my new Colt, cases were the old balloon head and had a greater capacity. Elmer and all the writers scrambled to alert shooters of the change to solid head cases. We scrambled to stock up on the old balloon head cases.
Cheers from Darkest California,
Ross