32 H&R Mag

L Ross

Well-Known Member
Yeah, that's always the sticking point- price. That's part of why those guns sold well, they were inexpensive in the day. You aren't going to sell a million of them today.
Sadly that's correct. There was a day when every rag tag country kid ran around with an old twenny two and added stuff the the family larder. The 1968 gun control act and mandatory hunter safety spelled the end of that era. Nowadays, a Mom wouldn't know what to do with a dead pheasant or bunny anyway. The day of returning pop bottles for the deposit from the local bottling plant, and riding your bike to the Gambles Store for a box of Gamble's Skogmo 22 shorts is as dead as a dodo.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
I used to bring crabs and oysters home in tidewater Va area, and then rabbits and armidillo home in
rural Fla. Mom knew exactly what to do with them. I did have to get the armadillos out of that
shell, though. And of course gut and skin them. She handled the crabs, live in a bucket and
oysters muddy in a bucket.

Bill
 

RicinYakima

High Steppes of Eastern Washington
That is a great mould! Elmer Keith said that he never designed a 32 Long bullet because that one would work just fine. Six-Guns
by Keith, 1955.
 

Intel6

Active Member
Looks like the NOE .32 Wad cutter mould I got for my .32's except it has a pointier nose. Obviously that Lyman mould was the inspiration for it.315 89 PB.jpg
 

RicinYakima

High Steppes of Eastern Washington
intel6, that is a copy of the Lyman 313492 button nosed WC, not the Lyman 313445 a true SWC. They are easy to confuse if you don't have pictures to compare them together.
 

CZ93X62

Official forum enigma
There is definite similarity between "445" and "492", at least appearance-wise.

Lyman #313445 was the proximate cause of me becoming involved in bullet casting. Early 1981, I had a S&W Model 31 x 3" that I wanted to reload for. Mainstream bullet makers of the time ignored the 32 revolver calibers with enthusiasm. I perused "Shotgun News" and found a supplier that sold "Green Bay Bullets", and among the products offered were Lyman #313445 SWCs at low cost. I ordered a couple hundred to see how they would fly. IIRC, 3.0 grains of Unique was decided upon as the fuel ration, and cartridges were assembled into once-fired W-W cases.

And did those rounds ever shoot! OEM 32 S&W Long are pretty docile critters, these loads weren't screamers but they landed right where the sights looked at 25 yards and clustered tightly. I was hooked. Time to start casting. The closest I could get locally to the #313445 was its short-nosed Lyman cousin, #313492. "Close enough for government work", I thought. Flush with an overtime check's largesse, I bought new #313492, #358432, #358430 (195 grain version), and #311291 on that shopping trip to Berman & Sons in 1981, and a couple sets of handles. I still have all 4 of those moulds.
 

L Ross

Well-Known Member
Boy, I haven't heard about Green Bay Bullets in a long long time. I found out GB Bullets was going out of business and told a friend who had a small bullet casting business. I brokered the deal because I lived in GB at the time. I loaded everything into a 6x6x12 enclosed trailer and the rest in the 8 ft. bed of my F-250 Super Duty. The guy from GB Bullets used some BARC employees for a while, (Bay Area Retarded Citizens), and they were hard on moulds. They didn't always understand you never hit a mould with a metal hammer. Years passed and I ended up with an awful lot of those moulds, many of them obsolete and no longer available. I traded off all of the round ball moulds, sold some real odd ball stuff to friends, and kept quite a few. I have a very big roll of the original labels for Green Bay Bullets left.
I just looked at the labels, no address on them. The guy lived right off Mather St. between N. Broadway St. and N. Ashland Ave. in GBPD zone 301.
 

mattw

Active Member
From what I have read, the design of the 313455 was intended to extend the range of a full type 3 wadcutter by increasing the aerodynamic properties of the bullet. I am and always will be a big fan of a true SWC bullet, so I just had to have this oldie. The downside... the lube grooves are tiny and shallow, but it does not seem to affect the 311492 performance. This should just about complete my assortment of 32 bullets. I would still like a 115 to 118 SWC without a gas check.

It is more than likely that I will PC this little guy, but I will make a couple hundred conventionally lubed bullets to test. I also picked up a minty 255438 DC at the same time, this bullet is the nuts in 22TCM at 1800FPS pc'ed and gas checked. 2 or 3 hundred rounds and the bore is spotless and they are as accurate as I am with my old, horrible eyes. My original 225438 is not pretty and was abused as a child but still makes good, true bullets.
 

CZ93X62

Official forum enigma
#313492 does have a "rebated" nose diameter, my example's nose diameters run in the .305" ballpark. This feature has allowed some liberties for crimp placement with a 32 SWL sizing die minus decapping rod--first in a cranky Walther GSP-C wadcutter gun and later in the 1895 Nagant revolver in 7.62 x 38R. Ya do what ya gotta do to make the toys run. (I an still jones-ing about the GSP-C.......what an accurate pistol).
 

Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
I think I have a 445 in the collection. I may be confusing names of the designers, but I think that style was also offered in 38 and maybe 44 and was known as the "Herrick" (sp?) design. Does that ring a bell for anyone else?
 

L Ross

Well-Known Member
I think I have a 445 in the collection. I may be confusing names of the designers, but I think that style was also offered in 38 and maybe 44 and was known as the "Herrick" (sp?) design. Does that ring a bell for anyone else?
I went to my old Lyman Hand Book of Cast Bullets to try to confirm that for you. I know I've read the name Herrick in conjunction with bullet mould design, but all it said in the notes were, "Wadcutter bullet designed for the 32 S.&W. Long."
 

mattw

Active Member
I am curious as well regarding the designer... Have been looking, but nothing found. It appears to be a modification of the Himmelwright wadcutter, with the conversion to type 3 and a SWC nose added. But I doubt it was Himmelwright as the timing is all wrong and the lube grooves are all wrong for his design style.
 

CZ93X62

Official forum enigma
One of the moulds I bought at the same time I acquired the #313492 was Lyman #358432, which is by appearance the 38/357 caliber version of the "492". I don't have info concerning a 44 or 45 caliber version of these bullets/moulds.

Their as-cast nominal weights are 92 grains and 160 grains, and while I have no specific info on the designer(s) or their rationale, what these WCs have is the clean-cutting bullet-hole capability that target types crave and also weights that correspond to that of both calibers' "service bullet"/RN weights. This might pose an advantage in fixed-sight service guns that were meant to be "Point-of-aim = point-of-impact" with said service loads.

I don't think the rebated nose portion was meant to be a "bore-rider" per se. I recall something the late Ken Waters wrote concerning "shoulderless RN bullet designs" and their high accuracy quotient. His theory was that RN bullets of this type lacking the sharp shoulders favored by the paper-drillers tended to "center themselves" in forcing cones of revolvers far more easily than did the sharp-shouldered WC and SWC bullet designs, and that RN bullets performed well even in revolvers where cylinder indexing with barrel and forcing cone might not be ideal. Perhaps this rebated portion on "492", "432", and (if it exists) on #445 are meant to help bullets navigate the jump and misalignments in this fashion. I dunno. Loads are a bit easier to chamber than are the flat-fronted/flush-seated wadcutters. FWIW.

I have run both the 32 and the 38 caliber WCs from 700 to 1200+ FPS, and they remain accurate throughout those velocity ranges in 1-16", 1-18.75", and 1-20" twists. Both also do NOT perform the wadcutter stunt-work of tumbling at 65-70 yards when started at 700-800 FPS, like a lot of the swaged HBWCs have. I'll cop out to the STRONG BIAS I have favoring SWC/Keith bullets in wheelguns, but these two WC bullets just work too well to move down the road. They are also the only WC bullet moulds I own--or have ever owned. The Elmer Keith Siren's Song continues to reside strongly in my mind, but I do recognize good performance and accuracy when I see it.