[Hog Buster]

I’ve been reloading for many years so I’m not much into experimenting anymore. I’ve settled on which cast bullets I like and the charge behind them. Still I guess that you’re never to old to learn something new. Today, for me, it was Beagling.

Beagling is when you shim a mold so that it will cast larger diameter bullets. While there’s probably several ways to do this I accomplished it with aluminum tape. It worked like a champ. An old Lyman .429 mold that dropped bullets of .427 in diameter was my test platform. The aluminum tape measured .004 in thickness so I simply stuck 3 small strips, sides and bottom between the mold halves, leaving some room between strips as an air gap. Bingo, I now cast bullets .431 in diameter from a old mold that was almost useless.

Getting caught up in my new experiment I cast about 150 bullets. Even with the heat the tape stayed in place, I was amazed. Measured the bullets and found that they were still fairly round. After a pass through the sizer they were a nice round .429 and I had a useful mold again.

I had read about this procedure some time back, but hadn’t thought much about using it. It sure as shootin’ works and is extremely easy to do. It also helped me kill time while melting a batch of stinky stick-ons.