Attached is a photo of three tools. The brass pair , of course, form a bullet mold. The numbers 74 and 9 are stamped on the back of the male piece. Caliber seems to be in the 30s range. Can anyone identify the period or gun type or mold maker ?

Middle item, the pliers, came with the group. They must be made for a specific purpose. But what ?

The right item is a vice type tool. Purpose or use, well I don't know.

Any help is appreciated.

Daryl,
To me, the two tools on the right look like spring clamps. Spring clamps come in so many configurations and styles, most of them made to suit the gunmakers specific purposes. A lot of them are made for only 1 particular type or make of gun.

I don't know what the plier tool on the upper right is, but I suppose it could be used to remove and install mainsprings. It could also be a small version of the specialized pliers used in sheet metal work to close standing seams, hems, etc.

The tool on the lower right is a hand vise. I have about a half dozen of them in different configurations. They are very useful for holding small parts during grinding or polishing. They hold much better than is possible with your fingertips, keeping small parts from getting flung to the far reaches of your shop. And they keep your fingers from getting burned as the part gets hot during grinding, and act as a heat sink. But that's no excuse to not dunk the part in water to avoid drawing temper. I always have a hand vise and a pin vise within arms reach of my bench grinders.

I'm interested in hearing more about the bullet mold. It appears to be a nose pour mold with a sprue cutter on the nose end. It looks like something that would be used for molding paper patch bullets.

OK, here's an image I found that seems to suggest that the tool on the upper right may also be a hand vise, but that the part which holds it clamped down on the object being held appears to be missing:

Keith, your images are helpful. The hand vise with the screw is most like the third from the left, but with a wood handle. Your picture on the right has similarities to my tool, but my tool shows no signs of the spring or keeper on yours. Interesting that the notch on the inside rear of the handles is similar. not sure why it is there. It would have been interesting to see these tools in operation.

Measurements on the mold are interesting to me, but I am not a an expert with vintage rifles and cartridges.

The bottom half [male part] has a recess of .392" diameter and .202" deep. The upper half [female part] has a .443 " diameter at the base , quickly tapering to a point. That recess is .406" deep. This seems to cast a bullet with a shoulder between the upper and lower pieces. It must have been an unusual cartridge to use this shouldered bullet.

Daryl, there are a lot of different variations of hand vises, and you can see many if you do a Google image search for them. They show up fairly often on Ebay too. I just used one almost exactly like this one last night. They are nice because they have a wider jaw opening than most, and the jaws remain parallel:



Hand vises are still made, but seldom seen, considering how useful they are.

Thanks for the additional info on the bullet mold. That is an unusual configuration. Hopefully someone can shed some more light on it.

The bullet mold may be intended to cast a heeled style bullet. It appears to be a relatively modern solution, possibly to keep someone's old gun shooting at a time when cast bullets weren't so readily available for purchase. It doesn't appear to be able to form grease grooves, but may have been an intuitive project for a gunsmith that was handy with turning on a lathe. Only guessing, neat little pile of odds and ends.

Often times grooveless bullets were intended to be paper patched/jacketed. Without some good dimensions would be hard to say if this one fits that category or not. IF its OD is the same as the bore diameter of some caliber there's a good chance that is what it's for.

For instance, a bullet designed for paper patching in a .30 caliber would have a bullet of around .300" rather than the normal .309"-.311" of a grooved cast bullet to be used lubed & bare.

I'd considered that possibility craigd. But the difference between the heel diameter and the major diameter is around .051", so the case neck thickness would be extremely heavy at around .0255". I also considered that maybe this was designed for use with a heavy sabot, and that the major diameter was intended to ride on top of the lands. Otherwise, leading would be a real problem without any grease grooves, unless velocity was pretty low. But the design does present some possibilities for building a lathe turned paper patch bullet mold.

Only guessing for fun here. When Daryl noted the large diameter, it seemed like it was meant for one of the old .44 cartridges. A dip or tumble lube would likely be good as those seem to generally be low pressure and velocity.

It looks to be a purpose built mold, maybe from scrap, there wouldn't seem to be a reason for the threaded hole on the face of the female mold face. The sprue plate, handle components and bulk of the mold don't seem to have an antique origin.

Since I'm guessing on the mold, maybe, someone cobbled up a few brass tubing case walls grafted on to the head of a close donor cartridge. It's a short little bullet, likely for a revolver cartridge or similarly chambered carbine. There's not a whole lot of bore riding surface area for paper patching. Maybe.

It doesn't look like it was used much, which might be understandable. Still, it seems like part of some setup to get an old gun shooting. If there's no taper built in, she might have been a bullet sticker, but there aren't any signs of the outside being struck much to drop bullets. Interesting to see what folks might come up with.

The threaded hole in the female portion was used for the steel "lever" that you see in the following picture. I am not a rifle or pistol expert, but the mold does seem to be quite old. The numbers stamped seem to possibly indicate factory type work. Possibly the marking on the back of the male part is 74 and F6.

Vices of these types are often used in clock repair, but there is no reason why they would not be useful in any workshop handling mall metal parts.

Daryl, that steel "lever" you mention is known as a sprue cutter. The hole in it would be centered over the open end of the mold, and molten lead bullet alloy is poured in. After it sets up, a mallet is used to tap the sprue cutter laterally, thus cutting off the sprue and any extra alloy on top. The tapered hole in the sprue cutter acts as a small funnel for the molten alloy, and the sharp lower edge facilitates cutting off the sprue. The cut off bit is dumped back into the melting pot.

Evidence of this sprue cutting process can be seen on most cast bullets, and on cast lead round balls. It is most often seen on the base, but this is a nose-pour type mold, so the sprue cutter is on the nose end. I kinda figured that the hole in the female face of the mold top was for the screw attaching the sprue cutter to the mold top. The maker could have drilled a blind hole, but chose to drill all the way through.

craigd, your idea of this being built to get an obsolete gun shooting again seems plausible, as does the idea that thicker walled brass tubing could have been grafted to suitable donor case heads. Some would say that's more trouble than it's worth, but certainly no worse than cobbling up shells to get an old pinfire gun shooting again. Most bullet alloy shrinks slightly as it cools, so if the inside was well polished, it probably didn't stick bullets, even without taper. Paul Matthews shows a remotely similar nose pour mold for a paper patch bullet in his book, "The Paper Jacket". The large flat nose would also provide a spot to give a little push with a dowel too. One way to know would be for Daryl to enlist a friend who does bullet casting to fire up the pot and try pouring a few.

Keith;
In regard to this statement, Ross Seyfried once in an article in Handloader magazine described what he referred to as his "Magic Bullet Mould". It made a grooveless bullet for paper patching & simply involved cutting the cavity in a solid aluminum block. He simply used round bar stock & the reamer had the nose form on it with a cylindrical body.
After the lead had set enough to cut the sprue the mold was inverted, given a slight tap & he said the bullet would just slide out. I have not tried it but will take his word for it, which goes right along with your statement.

Right Miller. This same initial shrinkage is seen when using Cerrosafe alloy to make bore or chamber casts. Cerrosafe is an alloy of bismuth, lead, tin, and cadmium which melts at under 200 degrees F. As soon as it solidifies, it shrinks slightly allowing it to be easily pushed out of the chamber. Then after an hour, it returns to 100% size, and you then have time to take your measurements. After several more hours, it grows slightly oversize. As I recall, even pure lead shrinks slightly as it cools, which is why mold-makers don't ream bullet molds to exact desired finished diameter.

http://www.csalloys.com/products-cerrosafe-alloy.html

Naturally, Cerrosafe might not shrink enough to slide out of a badly pitted chamber or bore. And if you allowed it to cool completely, it would get quite stuck too. You would have to remelt it to pour it out.

There are several different alloys in the "Cerro" family. In one machine shop, I worked in we used a lot of "Cerro-Bend". I am not certain just how it compares to Cerro-Safe but was very similar. Lead alloys will have different shrink rates according to their alloy. Bullets cast from the same mold of Wheel Weights & Linotype will not end up the same size. Add to that particularly with older rifles & handguns there can be a good bit of difference in actual bore sizes. Mold makers to keep down their inventory generally try to make their molds large enough to fit the max they see as being needed & depend on sizing down for the variables.

The good bullet mould makers will make a mould in any size you desire. Good moulds, really good ones, are one of the great benefits of modern technology.

Your mould looks to be a pistol mould with a very short base, and perhaps a longer nose. Sort of odd it seems. As I understand what you are saying, the shoulder at the ogive is not so terribly uncommon. They are essentially semiwad cutters that make wonderful target bullets for short range. They also do a fairly good job of scraping away powder fouling from a previous shot rather than running over it and deforming the bullet. I have one that I had Buffalo Arms make for shooting paper patched bullets in a .45-70 lever gun.

Here is another sort of similar bullet.
https://www.buffaloarms.com/455-250-grn-...50rnhb-rcb57919

Heel diameter being that much smaller could be for a copper gas check.