Hensley & Gibbs Design #50 – 38 Special Wadcutter Hollow Point Conversion

August 2010 – Date of Conversion

Another hollow point conversion by Erik Ohlen. The original mould was a damaged two cavity #50 that I had picked up years ago. The top of the mould block under the sprue plate exhibited rough handling and had several nicks in the mould base area. I asked Erik to clean up the base and convert the mould to a Cramer style two cavity hollow point design. I asked for two sets of pins, one with a very deep conventional round hollowpoint, which creates an approximate 115 grain wide mouth hollowpoint, or a "poor-mans" hollow base wadcutter, depending on the orientation of the loaded projectile. The deisgn of the hollow point conversion allows the bullets to be loaded “either end forward.” So, you can create a hollow base projectile or a big hollowpoint projectile.

The other set of pins was a 5 point star, a homage to either Mopar fans or the Texas star (my old home state).

The mould works perfectly. The conversion cost $145 total. 90 for the Cramer conversion, $15 for the repair, and $40 for a spare set of pins. For this post I mixed and matched the pins. I like the 5 pointed star hollow-points, but I think most of my testing will center around the big round hollow point. I want to see if I can gain a tangible improvement in my groups by using these as hollow base wadcutters.

Here are the photos:

The targets from both bullets shot on 11/02/2010:

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...and for comparison my standard reference load in .38 Special. A plain base Hensley & Gibbs #50 wadcutter loaded with 3.5 grains of Bullseye, W-W Brass Wadcutter cases, small pistol primer, loaded as cast with Lee Liquid Alox. Loaded on a Dillon 550B with a light crimp. Range 10 yards, standing, same weapon.

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Same load as above, range reduced to seven (7) yards, slow double action fire, 12 shots:

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