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Just curious how many uses there are for 9mm cases when making bullets from them? Pretty sure .40S&W, but can they be used for making .38 Special and .357 mag bullets too? Any others?
I have literally zillions of 9mm brass and that stuff's hard to sell, just thinking of options rather than just scrapping them. This swaging stuff intrigues me, but the startup costs are scary.
Oh, same question for .40S&W brass too, please! Also have stupid amounts of that, which nobody wants.
9's work for lots of stuff if you have the draw dies.
you can pull it all the way down to 30 caliber rifle jackets but it's something like a 5-6 step draw.
they make 40 cal bullets in 1-2 steps and no drama.
I use the 40 brass to make 44 mag bullets, it can be expanded up for 45 bullets also.
it could be drawn down to make 41 cal bullets.
with a trim die it would be capable of making just about anything for the 41 from 190 up into the 250gr range.
9 to 9 jacket, 9 to .308 jacket(2 draws) and 9 to 40 jacket is what I do.
I'd really like to dip my toes in that pool, just afraid I'd fall in up to my ears. Be different if I had a lathe or access to one.
even with a lathe buying a point form die is still worth the money.
I make 175 grain .357 bullets from 9mm brass.
Would just shoot cast bullets but the Ruger 77-357 does not want to feed lead wadcutters.
But scrapping 99 percent of the 9mm cases I pickup.
9mm brass makes some pretty good thumpers for the 357's.
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/pn3N1Ro.jpg[/IMG]
Don't own any 40 cal's but making bullets for the 40s&w out of 9mm brass is caveman simple.
A side note:
For some reason the jacketed bullets made with the brass cases get higher velocities than their copper jacketed counterparts. Those 150gr hp's pictured above did extremely well in the snubnosed 38spl's. By extremely well I mean those jacketed hp's made out of 9mm cases were within 20fps of the same loads using cast/pc'd hp's with the same weight, load, case fill/bullet's base seated to the same depth.
The "XTP" notches in those hp's were done with a hornady blank die and the nose profile was done with a 222rem sizing die. The hornady blank die can be adjusted to form small pleats/xtp notches like these in some 44cal/265gr hp's made from 40s&w cases.
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/x6NbstN.jpg[/IMG]
The blank die can be adjusted to make medium length pleats like the 357 bullets pictured above. Or long pleats like these 45cal/225gr hp jacketed bullets made from 40s&w cases.
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/s75osgr.jpg[/IMG]
The longer pleats/xtp notches allow the swager to add things like these glow in the dark airsoft bb's to the nose of the bullets.
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/R23M4if.jpg[/IMG]
Making jacketed bullets out of old brass is very doable. The biggest thing to keep in mind is the bullets base/seating depth/case fill.
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/uIUZpPE.jpg[/IMG]
Good luck
I have the same question for .25 acp and .32 acp. Turns out that herters and some other commercial brass cases are berdan primed. I seem to remember ManneyCA having a YouTube about these sizes and using different reloading dies to form them.
I haven't tried 38-357, but 9 and 40 brass sure make great 40/10, 41. 44, and 45 jacket boolits with most any nose style and weight you like.
No way I could afford to buy the choices I have thanks to BTs dies.