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Ideal 308280 8 Cavity Armory Mould
© 2014 –
Thomas C. Dugas
A recently acquired addition to my collection.
An Ideal marked 8 cavity 308280 Plain Base Rifle mould in excellent
condition. I received the mould last
week from the seller and only managed to clean it today for the photo
session. I will update below with cast
diameters and weights once I get a chance to cast with it (edit: done).
Click on photo for a larger pic…
I've got the
pot plugged in and the mould on a hotplate heating up. I had to lower the mould tray on my big pot
to get that large double nut on the end to slide into the mould guide. It was
fortunate that I made the rack out of all-thread. Took about 2 mins
to lower it:
And here we
go....
Seems to work ok. A little dirty on the first
cast...and a little finning, as I am running the
mould very very hot (you can see the uniform frosting
on some of the projectiles).
I am casting
with it tonight to see its personality.
The output may get recycled back into the pot. Looks like I have more crud to try and scrub
out.
Photos -
Click on the thumbnails for larger photos:
That is a long
drop for the molten lead stream to the cavity!
And the
output so far:
When I
posted the article on Cast Boolits I this is one of the responses I received:
“You get that finning under control and you should be good to go. What do
they mike?”
.304"
on the nose.....309" on the base....
Yeah, it's a
keeper. Ought to work
fine in my Krag. At 309" I
can tumble lube, no need to size.
I asked Doug
Elliott (aka "Floodgate on the Cast
Boolits site") to date the mould and his email to me
is below. The info on the 308333 was
provided by Doug because that is the other Ideal Armory mould I have on the way
in.
"Re: the History
of the Armory moulds, Ideal Handbook No.2 (circa
1891) offers "Moulds to cast 2, 3 or 4 bullets made on order",
Handbook No. 4 (1893) offers an earlier Armory mould for "six of the
largest military and sporting bullets."
This version lacked the two "stop hooks" on the sprue-plate;
apparently the square-headed stop screw took a real beating when cutting the sprues off, and in Handbook No. 10 (1898) the hooks like
those on yours were added. They still
took a beating though, and the outer hook is broken off my #308333. The number of cavities varied with caliber
starting about 1896, ranging from the six for the .45 - .50 caliber range
through seven for the .38s, eight in .30 and .32, and
nine for the .22 - .25 caliber range, all at $10. Marlin took over the Ideal line in 1910;
their tong tools bear the script "Marlin" logo, but - apparently -
the name and address on the moulds were not updated. Marlin shut down Ideal production at the end
of 1915 when they were taken over by the Rockwell interests, and we have not
found any tools or moulds traceable to Phineas Talcott - to whom Rockwell transferred the Ideal name - and
who sold out to Lyman in October, 1925.
As I said earlier, your present #308280 is first listed in the 1911
Handbook (though the other cherry numbers in this group show up in Handbook No.
17 (1906)); and, while #308333 is not listed at all by Marlin, it probably was
issued about 1908.”
So... “For #308280: 1906 - 1915, and
#308333: 1908 - 1915 - would be my best guess (though Lyman clearly inherited
quite a bit of unsold Marlin stock, and sold it off through the 1930's)."