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A Conversation With Jon by Glen E. Fryxell The bullets of history were made of lead, and were cast from hot, smoking moulds carved from iron and brass. Today we have jacketed bullets composed of advanced materials, using highly refined computer modeled designs. For those of us who still choose to cast our own, we are blessed with well-made, mass-produced bullet moulds readily available for most of the bore diameters we might have a hankerin’ to shoot. But sometimes we want to cast for an oddball bore size, or maybe we want to shoot a bullet design that’s been out of production for 50 years, what to do then? Again, we live in good times in that we have master mould-makers like Walt Melander and Rob Applegate who offer an astounding array of designs and diameters in their finely honed products. But sometimes a bullet just ain’t proper unless it’s borne of a mould wearing the badge of patina and the "laugh-lines" of graceful age. Make no doubt about it, old bullet moulds are special. But where does one go to buy a factory original mould for the .40-65 Winchester, or an old Ideal 454424 (the original Keith version) or a Lyman 358156 hollow point (one of Skeeter’s favorite bullets)? Gun shows? Estate sales? Auctions? I’ve bought used moulds in all of those places, but the bottom line is you can’t count on finding anything at any of them. Sometimes the moulds are there, but most of the time not, and when they are there half the time they’re rusted junk. What we really need is a place where quality used bullet moulds form the core of the business, where oddball stuff shows up routinely and where we can drop a note to say "Gee, I sure would like a Modern Bond .44 wadcutter mould. Got one lyin’ around?" Several years ago, I stumbled across the website of a small outfit out of Missoula, Montana called the Western Bullet Company ( http://missoula.bigsky.net/western/ or 406-728-4801). There were a couple dozen moulds listed on their site, along with a roughly equal number of used dies. Now I’m the first to admit that used bullet moulds are like catnip to me, but what really caught my attention was they had some stuff that was rather unusual – hollow-point moulds, hollow-base moulds, heel bullet moulds, odd bullet diameters, dies for obsolete cartridges, etc. One-stop shopping for the serious gun-crank. I stopped. I shopped. I cranked. (My apologies to Caesar…) Over the intervening years, I’ve bought a number of moulds from WBC, some common ones to round out the collection, some unusual ones that I have never seen anywhere else. When was the last time you saw a Lyman 313445 hollow point (this bullet screams from a .30 Carbine Blackhawk)? Or a 429422, the hollow-base version of Elmer’s first SWC? Or a 10-cavity H&G .38 wadcutter mould with handles? Through the course of our interactions, I have come to appreciate Jon Vivas, (the man behind WBC) as a real wiseguy – both in terms of his knowledge of cast bullets, moulds and the history of shooting, and also because he’s a dedicated wise-acre. This interview came about because I thought the sixgunner.com clan might enjoy what he had to say and would benefit from knowing about his service. With no further ado…. Q: In perusing the bullet moulds, reloading dies and cast bullets that Western Bullet Co. has for sale, it is readily apparent that you have an interest in so-called "obsolete" cartridges, and the historical side of firearms and bullet casting. How did you get started casting bullets? What was the first cartridge that you loaded your own home-grown cast bullets into and how did they shoot? Jon: Purely financial. I used to live in the dorms while going to the university and I had almost no money. When I needed bullets to shoot my .357 and .44 magnum I would scrounge lead from the range, melt it down on a Lee furnace behind the dorm, and size the bullets in an RCBS sizer c-clamped to the desk of my dorm room. I remember that in a good afternoon I'd have maybe 200-300 bullets done. That was when I had more time than money. (As opposed to now where I have neither). I shot more .38/357 with lead bullets than I did my .44 so I'd say the first cartridges I cast for were .38 & .357. (Using RCBS moulds, by the way.) They shot rather well, I suppose. I was young enough that making noise and throwing lots of lead downrange were the big things for me rather than accuracy. I do recall the odd 'fishy' smell and large amounts of smoke from the Lyman black bullet lube. The interest in obsolete stuff didn’t come until a few years later when I started a little business loading obsolete and cowboy ammo. (This is all around 1989-1991) The first obsolete cartridge I loaded for on a regular basis was the .25 & .32 Remington. Q: Ah! A fellow tightwad! Do something like casting bullets on dorm property today and somebody would probably make a stink about "hazardous materials on state property". Did those .25 and .32 Remington loads use cast bullets? Q: When did WBC get started? Jon: 1997 I believe, changed the name from Yukon Arms to reflect our getting out of the gun and ammo reloading business, which had been going on since 1990. Too much headache on the firearms end and I really didn’t enjoy loading ammo for people. The first order processed by WBC was for 2 boxes of .401 WSL JSP bullets. Jon: Hmmm..hadn’t heard the bit about the 156 and 244 being the weight of the bullet. If so, it's a fortunate coincidence that the cherry numbers were not already in use. As I understand it, the cherries are numbered on a fairly chronological order. Cherry #100 came out before #200, etc. However, when a mould was discontinued the cherry # would be re-issued. (Otherwise we'd have cherry numbers close to 1000 by now). Ideal/Lyman used to give cherry numbers to roundballs (nowadays they just use the diameter of the ball). When they stopped doing that a lot of those cherry numbers were reassigned. Let me give an example of a reassigned cherry number. Pick up any Lyman catalog and you'll see a .30 caliber 170 gr. FNGC bullet that’s for the .30-30. That’s mold #311041. Well, you figure since it's cherry #41 it must be an old design. Nope. The original cherry #41 was a paper patched adjustable weight mould from about 110 years ago. When they came out with this new .30 caliber design they gave it a cherry number that nobody was using - #41. So how many re-issued cherry numbers are there? Ken Waters came up with at least 70 or so in his article in the #47 Lyman Handbook. There have to be more than that though. Determining if a number was originally used somewhere else can get a little tricky. Easiest way to tell is if the bullet has a gas check or not. Gas check designs started around the low #300's. If your mould has a number below, say, #300 and has a gas check Also, I’d like to mention that were several custom options available, so if you see a mould that doesn’t quite match the description in the books that may be why. Some of the things that could be ordered: bullets could be had in different weights, a set of blocks could have a different bullet for each cavity, some proprietary designs were never listed in the Lyman books and were carried by other companies (Wildey, Harvey, etc.), some designs were made, but only on a custom basis and were never cataloged, any non-HB design could be had as a HP, etc. However, these variations are not too common. Q: You mentioned that GCs came into the picture somewhere around cherry #300, when was the gas-check invented? Jon: Hmmm…according to my old Ideal Handbooks it was patented around 1907. I'd guess it predates that by a few years. I think the introduction of the .30-06 is what really got the gas check project going. A lot of Krag designed bullets were modified to take gas checks. You can see bullets in the Ideal handbooks that are identical to the older Krag bullets except for a gas check heel. Q: What was cherry #1
Jon: Beats me. Ideal made moulds for several years before actually assigning numbers to them. However, in the numerical system that they have been using for the last 110+ years the first one would be #3081, a 250 gr. FN "Designed by Wm. Cooper ...used by Dr. Hudson" (Yes, of the Hudson bullet fame). Jon: Funny thing, they were called "Express" bullets back then. The idea of the HP was not for expansion but rather to reduce weight (and thereby increase velocity) while keeping the same general profile of the 'solid' bullet, thus no change in rifling twist was required. What is really fascinating is that there were no HP pistol bullets for a long time, only rifle. Numerically, Cherry #27 (#25727) would be the first HP. First HP pistol bullet would almost certainly be one of the .38 calibers. Q: I've bought a number of hard-to-find moulds from you over the last few years, from itty-bitty .32 Wadcutters, to hollow-point Keith SWCs and big bruiser .45 FP's, some of which I have never seen anywhere else. Where do you find this stuff?
Jon: Oh yeah, I tell you, you tell someone else...next thing you know I'm outta business. There’s a fella who collects military weapons here in town. He's been doing it for over 40 years. One day I asked him how he got all these amazing deals. I remember his exact words "After you've been in this business long enough the deals come looking for you." A lot of stuff is e-mail and snail mail from people saying that they heard of me and wondered if I buy moulds.
Jon: Hmmm...well the old Ideal handbooks gave recipes for lubes that were rather interesting. Ozocerite is mentioned as well as Pratt's Astral Oil. Ever hear of either one? You'd go to your local coal oil supplier and get the stuff. Beef tallow was also suggested. Wanna guess what that smells like after a few weeks in a box of ammo? Q: Agreed! I've been using a moly variation on the old beeswax/Alox recipe (50/50 beeswax/moly grease) for about 5 years now and been very pleased with it. Apache Blue is highly regarded by those who have used it. What sort of lubing gear do you use?
Jon: I'm not terribly picky. Either a Lyman or RCBS sizer seems to be what I use most simply because punches and dies are so plentiful. For the mass production stuff a Star is obviously the way to go but it doesn’t seat gas checks very well. The Saeco is supposed to be very nice but I have no experience with it. Jon: We mix up wheelweights and linotype until we get something that’s a little harder than #2 alloy (traditionally a 1:10 mix). It's hard enough for pistol and rifle shooting but not so hard as to shatter or cause sizing problems. Guys love the .348 cast bullets because they'll go stem-to-stern through any elk on the planet. When folks are concerned about deep penetration we steer 'em to the cast bullets...they penetrate deeper than any jacketed bullet at the same velocities. We did experiments shooting into various materials and the lead bullets always penetrate deeper. There are a lot of .44 and .45 sixguns out in the bush here in Montana loaded with big Keith type bullets. The eclectic mix of bullets we offer is half-happenstance and half-purposeful. The town I'm in has a half dozen gun shops where you can buy cast bullets. You can get a .38 158 gr. RN pretty much anywhere, so we don't worry about carrying them. But, if you want a 215 gr. SWC for your .357 Maximum…well that’s a whole other story. In a nutshell we try to have the stuff you can’t find anywhere else. Most of the bullets we offer came to
Jon: Never seen one? Man, these things are monsters! As I understand it they were made for the .460 Weatherby cartridge. 545 gr. gas checked flat nose. Biggest gas check bullet made. Heaviest .45 made. If you look at bullet #311440 it looks just like that but ALOT bigger. Thing has a very, very flat hammer-like nose. Hits like a sledgehammer and has the stopping power of a heart attack. It’s one of those moulds that everyone seems to want and that doesn’t turn up very often. As far as I know, it was only offered in one-cavity moulds, so the 4-cavity that I have was a very exciting find. Custom moulds turn up from time to time and are interesting finds. Same for these rare ones. Jon: Just that we try to meet our customers needs, enjoy hearing from them and are always willing to help them find the bullet or mould they need to get their guns off the rack and into the field. Some other interesting statistics about Western Bullet Co.: Most popular bullet sold is our #375248
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