Geo.
A. Hensley #22 HollowPoint Conversion
(#22 is the “Standard” 45 Colt Bullet Design)
©
2014 – Thomas C. Dugas
This mould started out life as a George
A. Hensley design #22 two cavity plain base mould. The Hensley & Gibbs ledger has this entry
for #22:
#22 - .45 Colt. 250 grains.
"Standard" design with plain base, two grease grooves no crimp
groove. Noses has rounded curve to meplat. Note by TD Feb 2009 – This design appears to
be Hensley & Gibbs interpretation of the original .45 Colt projectile.
This mould is in my personal collection,
I purchased off of that auction site in the 1990's. Here is what it looked like before I sent it
to Erik Ohlen
at Hollow Point Bullet Moulds:
(click on photos for larger pic)
One of the cavities had a small nick in
the base, which I asked Erik to repair.
The cost was .008" or so lost from the base driving band, but the
result was perfect:
I received the
finished mould back from Erik about two weeks later,
here is the result after the conversion to the Cramer style Hollow Point
style. The Pin dimensions were provided
by Ed Harris & Erik:
The machine
work in my humble opinion is simply stunning.
If you're contemplating sending a mould to Erik I highly recommend his
services.
Had some time later
that week to cast with the new Geo. A. Hensley #22 Cramer style hollowpoint conversion.
Decided pics
were called for (even a movie too) as I went along with this (new) mould.
Here is the
first cast:
and what they looked like:
After casting a few I realized I wasn't getting fill out in the center band so I let the mould come up to a higher temperature almost to uniform frosting and achieved good results with band fill out:
Didn't take
too long to get a nice pile of hollowpoints:
The mould
seems to work pretty well. Erik advised
that the pins may need to oxidize a bit to work best, and this was borne out
through the casting session. The more I
cast, the better the mould performed:
The size as cast was right at .454", and after running them through the STAR sizer, they looked usable right at .452":
Here are some as cast before loading in .45ACP, the .45LC cartridge is next in line for loading so it was included for comparison purposes:
Here is a
sample weight:
Here are the loaded and ready to go rounds:
The ring on
the loaded round is caused by the seating die on my 550B. I will polish it out to create more of a
rounded area in the seating stem to hopefully cure this problem.
And finally,
here is a link to a roughly 35MB movie of me using my big casting pot and the
mould for those who want to see how the Cramer mod works. I noticed I had to be careful to ensure that
the sprue plate was moved out of the way before tapping the hinge to dislodge
the as cast bullets, if the sprue plate isn't moved out of the way, the bullets
simply drop onto the sprue plate and can get jammed in that area. Moving it out of the way cures the problem:
Link to Movie:
http://www.hensleygibbs.com/molds/22/66.avi
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