Swaging

[Jammer Six]

Okay, this looks like the best place here to ask, and you guys sound like the people to ask.

I'm interested in swaging.

The reason I'm interested in it is because I could make jacketed bullets.

To hear Corbin tell it, if I buy their equipment, I'll be able to quit my day job, and retire after about a month of swaging. So, let's just say I don't have enough salt to listen very hard to Corbin.

Does anyone here swage bullets?

Does anyone here own the equipment?

Where would one go for help?

Thanks, guys!

[felix]

If you make your own jacket material, and you make your own internal material, then possibly you can sell your bullets considerably cheaper than your competition, at least until your product did not measure up to that of the competition. A suggestion would be to use WW and beer can jacket material. ... felix

[9.3X62AL]

Welcome aboard, J-6. I can't help with your swaging questions, but I'm pretty sure some of the folks here squeeze out projectiles as well as pour them. And--since many of them CAST their cores prior to swaging--yer even on topic. You'll find that we're not a real deeply orthodox group when it comes to topicality. As for me, I allow Nosler and Sierra to do most of my swaging work for me, once in a while Hornady gets the call for their XTP handgun bullets. Like a lot of the posters here, my consumption of the "j-words" is a very small percentage of my shooting activity.

My impressions of the Corbin literature and text are a lot like yours, but the one tool I have from them--a cannelure cutting tool--works VERY well and as advertised. I got this critter to make cannelures in j-words for the 30 Mauser pistol originally, and it comes out a couple times a year for one reason or another.

[BABore]

Try here for some good info;

http://www.bulletsmiths.info/board/

[Buckshot]

............Jammer Six, Welcome to the board! I'm only aware of one person here on this board who has actually swaged (jacketed) bullets as a business. And so far as I know he offered only .375" slugs aimed at the 38-55. I have no clue as to the cost of jackets and such.

It's very similar to the way some people look at us casting our own. I've heard them say, "With the wide variety of commercial cast designs, why bother?" My answer to that is, if you shoot pistols, and shoot a LOT, then possibly spending the time to cast, lube-size, and then load the ammo it might not make sense. I tried to keep up with practice ammo (38 Special) for my wife when her department was supposedly going to be armed.

Of course I was just using a 2C Lee mould, but I did have a Dillon and actually got a thousand rounds loaded up. When I saw how fast she could burn through that I said screw this, and bought 2,000 commercial cast slugs .

One idea is to try and fill a nitch type market for oddballs, but right offhand I can't really think of what calibers are hurting for odd sized jacketed slugs. To be honest and not trying to discourage you by any means, but right now shooters and reloaders have it better then it has EVER been so far as components go. When you consider you can get cases and stuff for things like the 8mm Rast-Gasser or the 'Cattle Killer' up to 600 Nitro Express it leaves some pretty thin pickings in between.

Anyway, I've dealt with Richard Corbin, Dave's brother. He owns RCE Enterprises and was Dave's shop foreman. I bought his 'Walnut Hill' swage press and a set of dies to swage lead boolits to paper patch for a Whitworth and Rigby long range muzzleoading rifle. His work is superb so far as I'm concerned. Or let me say, I don't see how it could be better. At the time the die set and the press cost about $600.

I've never done any jacketed stuff, but seeing how the dies were made, and having a lathe I've made some of my own dies to produce some different boolits, or to alter cast ones.

Where a one man operation has it kind of tough is not being able to buy materials in bulk, and then the obvious fact that you ARE just one man. I would tend to think that there are many more one man outfits selling cast boolits then there are guys selling specialty jacketed bullets. Maybe one of them will interject some possible ins and outs, or pitfalls of a deal such as offering custom jacketed slugs.

Here's a Bulliten Board dedicated to swaging, but it's kind of quite: http://www.bulletsmiths.info/board/index.php

There is also a swaging forum at Accurate Reloading, but I've never checked it out:
http://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve

Richard Corbin's website (RCE Ent):
http://www.rceco.com/

.................Buckshot

[Jammer Six]

Thanks, guys.

I'm not actually thinking of going into business.

I've owned two businesses, and to own a business, you have to WORK.

I'm thinking of purely my own stuff- tinkering in the basement, going to the range.

What has me chasing swaging rainbows is that my range is an indoor range, and they don't allow lead.

Fortunately, they make an exception for Precision Bullets, probably because they don't LOOK like lead.

I'm off to check out your links. Thanks again!

[OLPDon]

Buckshot question for ya when you turn a swage die do "you" harden it when complet if so how ya do it. Have a lathe and a old hurters swage 2 ton press, would easy enough to turn die's for it.

[Edward429451]

I have Corbin's CSP II press and some 451 dies for it. I cast the cores or use shot and compress it. The core mould is a pita to use but works well. The cannelure tool is great.

I found no niche market so didn't become rich but the bullets it turns out cannot be beat by any (production) bullet. Every bullet I've ever made on it has been scary accurate, easily the best stuff I've ever shot. Precise weight control is likely the reason why.

The prefab jackets are expensive. They were .08 a piece before the copper hike, dunno now, haven't ordered any lately. I'll get the .224 RFJM kit eventually to turn fired 22LR cases into J-.224's (these are scary accurate too, I got a handful from a guy and shot them...wow)

Even if you go with someone elses equipment, get Dave Corbins two books, "Rediscover Swaging" and "Handbook of Bullet Swaging". Two superb books. The CSPII press only swages up to ~7 BHN but does do double duty as a SS reloading press.

[Jammer Six]

Are there other real world sources for jackets?

The .22 brass thing sounds wonderful, but I'm a 1911/.45 guy.

What are the choices besides buying Corbin's jackets?

[Bass Ackward]

What are the choices besides buying Corbin's jackets?

Jammer,

If your range won't allow lead, have you ever thought about plating your own cast?

Keep up the Fire.

[Jammer Six]

Jammer,

If your range won't allow lead, have you ever thought about plating your own cast?

Keep up the Fire.

Nope. I haven't. Manchu.

[Jammer Six]

Not going to, either.

[Jammer Six]

Still not thinking about it.

[Jammer Six]

Oh, damn...

[Jammer Six]

You had to say that...

What's involved in plating?

They allow plating.

I bet I could plate in the basement. Can you plate efficiently?

Accurately?

How much money are we talking about relative to swaging?

Does anyone here do it?

[Bent Ramrod]

Jammer Six,

Welcome, welcome. I swage .22 jacketed bullets on occasion. Back in the '70's, the Corbins advertised their set for making jacketed bullets from .22 RF shells and cast cores for $78. That was a fair amount of money back then, but I figured it was either a misprint or a huge bargain. In either case, I couldn't get the money sent in fast enough. Other dies in the Handloader's Digests of the era started at twice that figure, and quickly rose to the ionosphere.

The draw die for the .22 jackets works well enough, if the .22 shells are well annealed. It does leave an irregular band where the rim is ironed out and a trace of the firing pin indent on the edge of the base. (Also the "H," "U" or whatever remains in the center). With cast cores, and these jackets, the bullets were plenty good enough for shooting with my .22 Hornet (back then, 1-1/4" averages for 100 yard groups was the norm) and these gave up maybe another 1/4" to 1/2". Still good enough for Hornet ranges and species.

Later I found some J4 jackets somebody was unloading at a gun show and bought a core swage die from Corbin. By now the cost of the .22 rimfire jacket bullet set had risen by a factor of 5 and the core swage alone was about half of what I originally paid for the entire set. By weighing the cores, weighing the jacketed bullets, culling out the bad examples, and general constant unforgiving vigilance, I can get performance that approaches good commercial bullets. I can also vary weights to whatever degree I want.

Of course, now a lot of common caliber and weight bullets are available in bulk for cheap. This was not the case in the '70's.

J4 jackets are not a common item of commerce; I think only Corbin and maybe Berger sell them. Have no idea where "J4" itself is located, or what they go for direct. The last time I looked, the jackets were almost as expensive as some bulk bullets, if you buy the latter on sale. Corbin has dies to convert copper tubing to bullet jackets, if you want to try that. You can put any level of effort into swaging you want.

So swaging bullets is something you do if you are a survivalist type, or are in a niche business, or have some weird caliber nobody makes bullets for that you absolutely have to try, or are in benchrest competition and don't trust anybody else's product (and there's a lot of perfectly good bullets, even for this, out there) or if you are intrigued by the manufacturing process.

I guess I'm a little of the first and most of the last. I ran off a few hundred a couple months back. Took a while to cast, swage, weigh and age all those lead cores, and more time to seat the cores in the jackets, let them mellow out for a while, and then finally form the points. And weigh them again, just to make sure. I've loaded some of this latest "vintage" up but haven't tried them yet.

It didn't take many bullets, even at the beginning, before I stopped forever any griping about the cost of commercial bullets. "I wonder often what the bulletmakers buy; one-half so costly as the stuff they sell," to mangle poor old Omar Khayam.

I got into swaging because I was curious and there were opportunities to economize. The dies are much more expensive now, but it still is a fascinating process, so if you have the itch and the bucks, go ahead and try it. I would recommend an RCBS Rock Chucker press, or the equivalent O-press with compound linkage, as a minimum, even for .22 bullets. I had to replace my Pacific Super when I started swaging; the press took the pressure but that simple linkage was exhausting. You might need a specialized bullet swage press, like a Mity Mite or the one Edward 429451 has to get enough leverage to make bullets larger than 6mm or .25. Please let us know how your endeavor works out.

[Four Fingers of Death]

Funnily enough, I was on the Cobin site having a look last night. He stressed that it was a fruitless endeavour trying to compete on price, but to try and build a small loyal customer base that are willing to pay premium prices for premium bullets. The price are mind boggling, they have a gas check maker- $449! Bugger. The trouble is, it is hard to figure out what you would need so that you can do an estimate of the costs, etc. I have considered doing this in my retirement which I an just starting on, but most of my shooting is centred around hunting, informal range plinking, cowboy and military shooting. I think you are more likely to find a niche (read cashed up victims ) if you were active in benchrest, fly and silouette style shooting where accuracy is paramount. Not sure which way to hop. I fancy running a small gun based business to keep my 4wd on the road and allow me tax deductions, laptop replacement and pay travelling expenses to shoots, etc, etc. Mick.

[Bass Ackward]

You had to say that...

What's involved in plating?

They allow plating.

I bet I could plate in the basement. Can you plate efficiently?

Accurately?

How much money are we talking about relative to swaging?

Does anyone here do it?

Jammer,

I have no idea if they will allow it or not. You need to ask. But if it encases the lead in copper, then that sounds like the definition of a jacketed bullet to me. It should prevent gas cutting and dust which should be the greatest sourses. You may need special molds without grease grooves.

Here is one sourse:

http://www.caswellplating.com/kits/flashcopper.html

Here is one example:

http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpag...eitemid=624139

[223tenx]

I have a set of C&H dies that allow me to swage .357 HP j-words. They work ok, but I'm not sure if C_H still sells them, but I think they do I called them about making a set to swage .365 for a Makarov and the price was pretty high for custom dies. I also don't know how available the jackets are. I made a core mold from two aluminum plates. I've had these dies for 20 years. I get them out and play with them every so often. I ended up buying a 6 cavity SWC .365 Lee mold for th Mak and am happy with it.

[454PB]

I have the Corbin set to make .22 jacketed bullets from fired rimfire cases. I posted a message about it on the sister board to this one, and you can view it here, pictures and all:

http://reloaders.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=288