Swaged bullet shrank?

I have a bit of a head scratcher here. My brother recently got a set of swagging dies at a gun show and has been happily swagging bullets. He shoots mainly .38 special and .357 magnum and has been happy with the bullets he's been producing and shooting. He made for me some hollow point bullets for my .45 ACP chambered guns using a .40 caliber core made from wheel weight lead. The resulting bullets weighed around 217 gr. Checking through my reloading manuals I settled on 3.0 gr of Bullseye for a powder charge. It would be a light load, but should certainly clear the barrel and hit the target. First one I chamber and fire didn't sound right or felt right. I immediately removed the magazine and ejected the unfired round that chambered. I look down the barrel and there's the dumb thing stuck and grinning at me.

I took it back home and managed to tap it out with a 3/8 dowel rod and a hammer. Looking at the bullet I notice that there are very few if any marks from the grooves of the bore on the bullet, and from the carbon marks it would appear that hot gasses had blown by. When I measure it I find that the bullet now measured .451 not the .452 that it was before.

Is it possible that the core didn't expand enough into the jacket, which when fired caused the jacket to crumple letting the gasses blow by and encouraging it to come to a screeching halt inside the barrel?

My thought would be that 3.0 gr. of Bullseye is too light a load for jacketed bullets, especially one with a hard core. It may be enough to push a lead bullet through the bore, since there's less resistance with lead, but not the increased resistance of the jacketed bullet.

As for measuring smaller after entering the bore, it was probably squeezed down when it encountered the smaller bore.

Those would be my guesses.

Hope this helps.

Fred

3 gr of bulls-eye is a 38 special load.

I'd go with the above.

I have made and used those swaged bullets. The load is significantly too low but i would expect it to at least exit the bore. It didn't shrink.. It was swaged down when it entered the bore. Try again with a normal powder charge.

3.0 gr BullsEye is a very light charge even in the 38 special.

I took your advice and increased the load to 3.7 gr. of Bullseye. First three left the barrel, but accuracy did not impress me. The fourth one fired and suddenly my slide was pointing up at a 45 degree angle. The polymer frame of my gun cracked in half, and the darned bullet was still in the barrel. Thankfully I still have all the fingers that I was born with and didn't pick up any injuries.

Upon further investigation immediately after, I determined that it was the frame that failed and not the firing chamber. None of the ejected cases, including the one from the failure, showed any signs of excessive pressure. The pistole used was a Hi-Point JHP 45, but despite it's looks and general derision, they have been proven to be a solid product. I figure that the excessive force from the slide when the bullet came to a screeching halt put too much force on the frame when it blew back.

The only question I have is what the heck happened? I was using a Lee autodisk for powder measurement and verified that it was throwing the correct weight of powder. It would seem that the only suspect variable is the bullet used.

I can't imagine. 3.7 gr BullsEye is still below starting loads in every manual I have. I wonder if he made those bullet jackets with steel cases?

I used to have one of the hi point carbines. Worked just fine and no problems, never had or shot any of their pistols but a lot of negative reviews on line.

Bullet or load may not have had anything to do with it.

Glad your ok.

I do shoot an EAA Witness in 40s&w that I am happy with, all it has shot is home swaged bullets made from brass cases.

BT

What was used for the jacket of the bullet?

Something happened (powder bridging?) to get you some extra powder in that case to give excessive pressure. The thing about looking at cases to guage for excess pressure -- it takes something over 60k psi to give pressure indications on the case, but your auto pistol is designed to handle a third of that pressure and would probably suffer damage at half that pressure. QuickLoad says if you somehow got 5.5 rather than 3.7 grains of bullseye you'd get up close to 40k psi, which would be enough to mess up your pistol but still not show a thing on the case.

Jacket material is copper. As for powder bridging, I've never seen it happen with this powder measure. The pressure signs I was looking for would be on the primer, which is much thinner than the case. Also, wouldn't an over charge have resulted in damage to the firing chamber? And wouldn't the bullet at least have cleared the barrel with such a charge?

I have never seen a bullet stick in a barrel and blow back hard enough to damage the gun.
the only thing I can think of is if a blow back design doesn't have enough mass to resist movement.

I would just mail the thing back to hi-point.
I would almost bet they fix/replace it. [or laugh really hard]

Way low
and to remove stuck bullets
use a push rod from a 350 Chevy

Gun has been sent back. As for not having enough mass for a blow back design, I don't think anyone has ever accused a Hi-Point design of not having enough mass.

As for the reason why my load data was so low, you'll have to blame the Lyman 47th reloading manual for that. They have a starting load of 3.1 gr. for a 225 gr. bullet (3.0 was the closest value for Lee Auto Disk) and 3.8 gr. for a 230 gr. round nose design. So if it's way low then the Lyman data has been too lawyered up.

5.0 grs of bulls-eye and a 230gr Rn was the military ball load for i dunno about 75-100 years.