Another neat mold!

[marlinman93]

Been trying to find an original HM Pope bullet mold for my Pope Ballard in .32-40 and happened to call a guy back East to ask another question and we got on the topic of old loading tools. Eventually I asked if he knew of a Pope .32-40 bullet mold for sale and darned if he didn't have one to sell! We discussed condition and price and I sent him off payment a couple weeks ago. Of course USPS took 9 days for my payment to get there, but his return box came in only a couple days!
The mold is in excellent shape, with cavities that look like new! Of course it's a nose pour as Pope molds always seem to be, and it has all the "WAX" markings Pope used to indicate where melted wax should be use to lubricate pivot points. A great addition to my collection!

[Road King]

Great find and in amazing condition.

[marlinman93]

Great find and in amazing condition.

Thanks!

I got out my old Pope .28 caliber mold to compare the two and was surprised how different these two are! Pope bought his blanks with handles from Ideal, so externally they are very similar. One difference is the early Ideal handles didn't have the brass caps over the ends of the handles where they slip over the mold tangs, so my .28 Pope doesn't have those.
The real differences are inside on the blocks! First the sprue cutoff plates are much alike, except for the stop pins. On the .32 the pin is on the right, but on the .28 the pin is on the left and the left mold block and sprue plate both have pins that come together when the sprue is closed.
The even larger difference are the blocks themselves. Same Pope style bullet design, but a huge amount of hand work to make gas venting on the .28 Pope mold! It appears early on Pope thought gas venting might be a real issue and went overboard with venting lines under the sprue plate, and down both halves of the mold blocks! Then absolutely no venting lines at all on the .32 mold. So guessing he decided it was a tedious task to do all the hand cutting, with no increase in quality of bullets cast?

[Road King]

Thanks for the extra photos and the explanation. Now I will be looking out for these molds.

[marlinman93]

Thanks for the extra photos and the explanation. Now I will be looking out for these molds.

There's a .32-40 like mine on Ebay currently, but it wont likely ever sell. Guy has an insane price on it.

[marlinman93]

When it rains it pours!
I mentioned getting the .32-40 Pope mold to a friend and said I'd likely never find a .22 Pope mold, and not even the Ideal version for the .22WCF Pope barrel. He smiled and said to contact someone who had a .22 Ideal mold for sale! I did and it's on it's way to me now! Should see it Monday I think.



These Ideal molds were specifically for various early .22 CF cartridges and the barrels that had larger groove diameters than current .22 rifles use. I am guessing from the catalog number it will drop a .228" bullet at around 45-50 grains.

So the cased Pope Ballard is finally complete!

[oodmoff]

You're flush!

Congrats