Recently purchased a .375 Lyman mold from a gentleman here. I cast 50 bullets of WW yesterday. Was going to load a few today but when I started to lube size them they would go about half way and get harder to press into the sizing die. I measured a few and to my surprise the wider middle band checks about .385. Could this be a so called "stop ring" bullet for breech seating? I am not in the shop so I don't have the mold numbers handy. The mold was used but in very good condition. Cast's a handsome bullet.


JMH

I guess you could call it a stop ring bullet, but doubt it's for breech seating. More likely the mold was made for a .38-55 that had a very large groove diameter, and needed a larger diameter bullet to seal. But the issue with these large groove .38-55's is you can't chamber a fixed round in a case if the groove diameter is over around .381" so you either need to breech seat, or have a "stop ring" mold made to allow a smaller lower bands, but larger band forward to shoot as fixed ammo.
I have this issue with one of my Schoyen Ballards that has a .383" diameter groove. It's a muzzleloader so it shoots fine when loaded that way, but a .384" bullet seated wont chamber. I had Jerry Cleave build me a breech seater tool so I can shoot it breech seated, or ML. I also had a stop ring mold built by Accurate that's got a forward .384" band for fixed cartridges. I don't care to shoot it as a ML as it's just tiring to shoot much and load that way, so I breech seat or load fixed cartridges and it shoots both really well.