429360 mold fix?

[rrob692326]

I know this has been discussed before, but now with all the powder coating options and no need for the lube grooves, I was wondering if anyone has tried to ream out the lube groove ridges in the 429360 mold in an effort to make a boolit that engages the rifling in the front non contact area? Would it make a difference? Perhaps making it .433 all the way to the base of the nose? After all there are so many of these molds out there that are just sitting around not being used. I just hate to give up on such a nice looking boolit.
Thanks for your opinions in advance

[Wally]

Forget it...others have tried, at considerable expense. I tried two different bullets molds in this caliber and never found it to be accurate. Stick with the 250 Keith and be happy!

See Beagles article in Castpics about his attempts trying to get this bullet to shoot accurately.

[Don Purcell]

Why bother? I tried that bullet 40 years ago shooting at a steel plate about 18" by 10" at 200 yards and it would hardly keep in the size of a refridgerator but hit the plate repeatedly with the 250 Keith.

[stinjie]

The only way I got this mold to make accurate bullets was by replacing it with the 429421! That 429360 does look like it should be a good bone smasher,if it could just hit something.Maybe the sharp edge of the big flat nose affects aerodynamics,along with it's other design issues.It's tempting for a lot of us to try this"good looking" mold,usually inexpensive second hand purchase.

[Maven]

#429360 isn't a good performer for most folks, including me. While my mould cast beautifully, accuracy was terrible in my 10.5" bbl'd Ruger SBH. Here's what Glen R. Fryxell wrote about it:

"Gordon Boser also designed a SWC for the .44 Special. The Ideal 429360 was first cataloged in Ideal Handbook #37, published in 1950. By cherry number, it would seem that #360 might have come out sometime in the pre-WWI period, but Boser didn't come on the scene until much later and this bullet wasn't included in the Ideal Handbooks until 1950, so I suspect that this is a recycled cherry number (I haven't found any reference to the original #360, perhaps this number was skipped in the original series?). Boser's bullet featured a straight ogive, and a sharp corner where the ogive met the meplat (similar to the Modern-Bond "Ness" bullet, described above). It had a thick base band, and a small, round grease groove. It also had a somewhat undersized forward driving band (bullets from my mould measured about .424" across the forward driving band, perhaps this was intended to be some sort of bore-riding band? or perhaps it was designed for Colt SAA revolvers with tight bores?). As a result of its short bearing surface (i.e. only the last two driving bands) and undersized front driving band, this bullet tends to have alignment problems in modern revolvers, and accuracy is generally poor." ...GRF