New .44 caliber Brooks mold.

[Distant Thunder]

I have been so busy with other things since the end of August that I haven't had time to do much shooting and the shooting I've done has been more oriented toward leverguns and our up coming deer season in Wisconsin. That doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about my single shots and my .44-77 in particular.

When I started my .44-77 project I wanted to work with 3 bullet designs, the elliptical, the Medford and the original Sharps style long range all in paper patch of course. Having worked with the first 2 of the 3 designs I started thinking toward the Sharps design as my shooting season came to an end a bit early this year.

I had actually early on hoped to go with a nose pour adjustable mold from KAL Tool and Die and I contacted Rick last year before I had my rifle back from Shiloh with the new Krieger 17-twist barrel on it, but when my rebarrel job was delayed for Covid and a bunch of other reasons I decided it was best to wait until I had a better idea what I needed diameter wise for the new barrel.

Mid summer this year I again contacted Rick and let him know that I was ready to move forward with the mold. He was on vacation at the time and said we could pick it up again when he return to his shop. I was never able to get a reply from him again for some reason. After months and no word I decided to contact Steve Brooks and he immediately replied and said he could make a mold like I wanted. It took a few emails to get the details worked out and I ordered the mold. That was mid October.

Today the mold arrived and it is just like my other Brooks molds, a very good quality mold. I plan to use the Staedtler tracing paper that I’ve had success with in one of my BACO molds. That paper is very similar to the Seth Cole 55W in thickness, about .0015” and adds .005” when wrapped. So I ordered the mold to cast at .434” and Steve hit that size dead on. This puts the bullet at about .439” after dry patching and then I’ll run it through my size die to be the perfect fit in the bore of my Krieger barrel.

The mold will cast up to a 1.450” long bullet and the sample that was in the mold was 1.250” so if it looks a bit short in the picture that’s in part because it is. The rest is my cellphone lens!

The one thing that I’m not sure about is that while I thought I told Steve I wanted a flat base the mold came with a cupped base. In the past cupped bases have been difficult to cast with for me. On the other hand since the original bullets often had cupped bases I’ve decided to cast some like that for testing.

Which brings me to one of the things I’d like to hear about from the rest of the paper patchers on here. What has been your experience with cupped base vs. flat base bullets?

The cup on this new mold seems to be very well done, not too thin around the edge and not too deep. I wrapped the sample with my paper using a patch that was made for a much longer bullet and the excess patch folded over and into the cup beautifully. It’s not a tail but just a patch much longer than I would use for this short of a bullet. It’s only a 440 grain bullet cast this short. Maybe a good chicken bullet!

I did ask Steve if he would make another base screw for a flat base, I’m sure he will. That would give me the option going forward.

I’ll post some results after I cast some and do some testing. There’s nothing like a new mold to get a guy thinking about shooting!