DIY bullet mould

Totally awesome Eagle. Im very impressed on how good that came out! What did you use to grind your tooling?

Thanks for the thumbs up Reload.

Pathfinder, I chucked up the drill rod in the lathe and turned it down to size, used a file on the end of it while it was spinning and "eyeballed" the contour of the ogive. Ground the groove with a cut off wheel in the dremel. Took it out of the lathe, put it in a vise and used a hacksaw to cut the "bullet" in half down the length. Then just did a little relief/touch up work with the file on the back of it to get the cutting edge good and sharp. Hardened it after I got it looking like I wanted it. This is the unscientific way of doing it and would be near impossible to get 2 cherries just alike but the thing I like about this setup is that you can make a multi cavity mold just by moving the mold block in the fixture, centering and repeating the boring process. I'll see if I can get some pics of the process this afternoon.

Here you go brother;
The rod has been turned down smaller than the pilot hole drilled into the mold blocks and marked for the start of the ogive.

I changed the angle of the cross slide to 10 degrees and tapered up to the mark. It makes for less file work.

Rounded out the nose with a file untill it looked 'bout right.

Cutting the groove for the driving bands.

Cut the profile in half lengthways and then remove half of it.


From there just grind away a little material from under the cutting edge as a relief. The last one I did, I used a carriage support rod from an inkjet printer. It is plenty hard enough to cut the aluminum.

Oh man Eagle. That is truly awesome. You freaking rock! I love the idea of using the dreamed cut off wheel to cut the lube groves. I hate to ask another question but how did you hole the dremel on the carriage?
I cant wait till you can load a few and let us know how they fly down range.

Ummmm - I hate to admit it but I held the dremel in my hand Yeah, I know, nothing precise about that--. Actually I did make a plate with a cage on it that houses the dremel so I can mount it in the tool pust. This was just a quick and dirty set up. In all actuality through you could grind a tool bit real narrow or use a parting tool and achieve the same results.
I am anxious to load a few and see what the outcome is going to be. First thing I"ve got to know is how much that chunk of lead weighs so I can get a starting point on the powder. Not too sure about the seating depth, etc. etc. I'll be sure to post back when I get the results .
And by all means, if you have questions, ask away. I will be happy to try and answer them.

Right on man. Looks pretty dog gone good to me!

I guess I'll revive this thread instead of posting the results in another topic, but finally got some loaded up with the cast boolits from the home made mold. The average weight of the boolits was 132.4 grains out of the 40 that I have made so far. Sized to .357 and stacked them on top of 3.3 grains of tightgroup and cci 500 primer. OAL to 1.400. Did a 10 shot string through the F1 and the results are as follows;

1. 756.3
2. 705.9
3. 772.9
4. 763.5
5. 763.2
6. 767.3
7. 795.4
8. 807.1
9. 789.4
10. 755.6

High vel = 807.1 Low vel = 705.9 Ext Spread = 102.2 Energy = 172.7
Standard Deviation = 27.99

Loaded Round

5-shot group from 15 yards

Looks like a good bit of soot on the fired hulls--


Maybe you all can tell my why there would be so much black soot on the outside of the case after firing - maybe need to bump the powder up to 3.5? To me looks like the velocity and energy are a tad low.
All suggestions are welcome.

Looks like your homemade mould is a success!! Yea I would bump up the powder charge a bit more or maybe try a little faster powder, keeping the charge low at first of course ...


Great job.

Thanks DW. I love it when a plan comes together. I had fun piercing that squirrels ear too

+1 for bumping up charge a tad. or maybe faster powder. They look great and now you can really say I made it myself

Thanks Reload. I had plenty of titegroup so thought I'd start out with that. I will move them up a little and see what happens. I have some Unique that I want to try also. I will say that it is a hell of a lot of fun going from concept to contraption. I still want to try tweaking on it a little and maybe a different type nose just to see what my limits are. At the same time, if it gets to where we can't get stuff like this anymore, at least we will know how to make it.