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SteveStevens
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How old are these?
Yesterday at 10:01am
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Recent auction buy. A group of full boxes of Ideal gas checks. Priced at 10 cents per box. How old do you think these are?
  
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bullshop
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Re: How old are these?
Reply #1 - yesterday at 11:49am
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I cant give an exact dat on those but I can say why they were discontinued. The reason is/was that they do not crimp on as do modern gas checks.    That causes two problems.  One is inaccuracy due to the fact that they can and do part from the bullet indiscriminately.
  The other is a safety issue.  Though this has never happened to me several times customers have told me that the gas check was left lodged in the barrel and the next shot caused a bulged barrel at the point where the gas check was stuck in the barrel.
  I have pondered that possibility and doubted  it but coming from multiple sources have to acknowledge it as a possibility. A few customers have told me they will never ever use a gas checked bullet again for that reason.  For these reasons I stopped using the Lyman/Ideal gas checks many yours ago.  For about the past 20 years we have supplied our gas checked bullets with only Gator Checks. The GC gas checks are advertised as " the checks with bite" and they do crimp on tightly. 
One function of a gas check it to increase the shear strength of the bullet base to be higher than the alloy  alone.  The rifling is turning the gas check where as it might not turn the naked bullet.  Think about it as a stuck bolt made from lead. Put a socket wrench on it (rifled barrel) and it strips before it turns. Increase the shear strength buy adding a crimp on gas check to the base and the socket wrench holds and the bolt turns. If the gas check is not crimped onto the bullet maybe the check will turn but not the bolt.
That is a really simple idea to understand but incomplete. Incomplete because the rifling will actually form a mechanical fit between the check and bullet by pressing grooves through the check and into the bullet just like a bolt head and socket wrench interface, the deeper the rifling depth of your barrel the more positive the interface.
Since nothing in this game of loading ammo is absolute there are other variables involved such as bullet alloy hardness and chamber pressure that can make or break the intended purpose of using a gas check. 
Put quite simply the non crimp Lyman/Ideal gas checks did not work nearly as well as the crimp on type so they were discontinued. Newer Lyman and RCBS crimp on type gas checks I have suspected for a long time are made by Hornady.
  
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Jonathan
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Re: How old are these?
Reply #2 - yesterday at 12:16pm
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I have a couple of boxes the same as yours but with the label on the top of the box. They're marked 75 cents and I know that they come from the early sixties. I have shot thousands of these and have never had one stick in the barrel. Sometimes they fall off in flight and sometimes they stay on but in either case I have noticed no change in accuracy. The gas checks from Sage's Outdoors [Gator] are the best that you can get today and yes, all the others are made by Hornady.
  
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art_ruggiero
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Re: How old are these?
Reply #3 - yesterday at 2:21pm
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sell for scrap  copper is high  art
  
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Bent_Ramrod
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Re: How old are these?
Reply #4 - yesterday at 2:47pm
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The original idea of the gas check that A. C. Gould, the inventor, had was that it would stay on the bullet through the sizing, storing and loading cycle, but would come off after firing as the bullet cleared the muzzle, like a paper patch or a card wad does.

Unfortunately in practice, some did and some didn't.  And of those that did, they could come off anywhere along the bullet's flight.  This only added to the early 20th century canard that "cast bullets are OK for plinking and cheap practice, but they aren't accurate enough for serious work."

I certainly prefer the Hornady gas checks (and now the Lymans also crimp on) but I use those older ones, out of those boxes, all the time for my casual shooting.  The only risk I take is a flyer or two on a sight-in target.  I've never had or heard of one stopping in the barrel while the bullet continues on.

I would guess that those packages were from the 50s-early 60s at the latest. Lyman was still using the "Ideal" name then, maybe to continue the brand; maybe as a device to use up all the "Ideal"-marked mould blanks and packaging they had left when they bought the company in the mid-20s.  In the late 60s-early 70s they changed the packaging to the black-and-white striped design and started calling them "Lyman" gas checks.
  
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SteveStevens
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Re: How old are these?
Reply #5 - yesterday at 3:33pm
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Interesting, Thanks for all the gas check info  I've been using gas checks for 50 years.  I knew about the flying off in flight deal because in the old Lyman manuals it talked about it. Coming off and staying in the barrel is new to me. I paid a dollar for the lot, LOL. I make most of mine now, only because it keeps me busy on cold days.
  
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