Cast 44cal hp's Mihec mold

[forrest r]

Been meaning to cast some 44cal hp's from a new Mihec 432-gc mold. The bullets were designed for snubnosed/short bbl'd 44cal firearms. The original mold was supposed to cast these bullets.


I have an updated mold that uses the cup/large/penta/small hp pins. I used 1 part pure lead to 1 part 8/9bhn range scrap for an alloy resulting in 7/8bhn bullets air cooled. With my alloy I got .4325" bullets that weighed, left to right:
cupped hp 190gr
penta hp 185gr
small hp 185gr
large hp 178gr


A close-up of the Mihec 4-cavity mold. I don't both to heat cycle them, wash them, nada. Simply throw them on the hot plate and get them good and hot. Then lube the hp pins and sprue plate and start casting.


Only cast #21 of bullets today so I'll need to do another run with this mold. I want 30#+ of bullets for testing. Now I need to size and gc them and then pc them and re-size them.


I plan on testing them in a 2 1/2" bbl'd ca bulldog/44spl, a 4" bbl'd s&w 29, 6 1/2" bbl'd 629, 10 contender and 14" contender. The velocities will be 1000fps to 1700fps+ depending on the bbl length along with 44spl & 44mag brass.

I'm hoping these bullets work out from this 4-c mold. If they do I'll end up selling the 2-c version of this mold along with a H&G #142 2-c mold that casts a similar bullet that is a 220gr solid nosed swc and a 20gr swc hp.

Anyway, another great day cast bullets from free lead with a fantastic mold.

 

[FROGO207]

Nothing like rolling your own. Looks like a good day spent making good bullets. Those look nice.

 

[forrest r]

There is a lot of work that goes into what I consider a specialty bullet. It took +/- 1 1/2 hours to cast the #21 of bullets. Took another hour to inspect them for defects/culls and size them in a push thru sizer. Another hour to pc them. That's around 3 1/2 hours to get them to that point.

The last step takes 2+ hours to do those #21 of bullets (800+/- bullets). After pc'ing them I'm installing a gc using super glue gel. A benefit of pc'ing the bullets in now the bullet's base is covered with a polyester. The super glue gel has a tight hold on the gc which makes the bullet have not only better performance (more consistent velocities) there's no fliers from the gc falling off.

So ya there's +/- 5 1/2 hours to cast and process those #21 of gc'd specialty bullets.

Typical bullets don't get sized twice & if they use gc's the gc doesn't get super glued on.

 

[Hooda Thunkit]

I've got one of his brass 4 cav 357 carbine moulds.

I've not yet cast with it. I think I'm a bit apprehensive about using the brass mould, as all I've used so far is aluminum or iron.

You certainly make it look simple enough. At some point I need to just get after it. The only way to learn to swim is to get wet...

 

[forrest r]

Been casting with brass molds for decades, started with Eagan molds decades ago. I prefer brass over steel or aluminum, they tend to hold heat better and more evenly casting a rounder bullet.

Most casters are afraid of "tinning" a brass mold. Kind of hard to do, like in extremely hard.

I've owned a lot of different cramer molds over the years with the hb and hp pins and still own several to this day. That's why I like the Mihec molds, they use the cramer style pins.I've lost count on how many mihec molds I have right now 19/20? They cast a fantastic bullet and the over sized spru plates make a excellent bullet base