Lathe for making boolits

[arawakstorm]

I am interested in boolit making, using a lathe, but have no idea where to begin. Looking to make .270, .308, etc.

Anyone have any experience with this? Please advise.

[marten]

A used Hardinge may be a start or an NC machine with bar-feed...
Precision & repeatability in machining is the goal and this comes at a price.
You will need to do a lot of research regarding machining non ferrous alloys.

[Splatter]

Something like this?:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/zfDObdkxFOA

[marten]

Something like this?:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/zfDObdkxFOA

Aint that nice!

[Casting Timmy]

If you're just prototyping I would just get a manual lathe, preferably with a large thru hole in case you ever want to do your own chambering of barrels. Unfortunately you will keep finding stuff you can do on the lathe and find other projects that you want to build.

I would go off your budget and look for the lathe that come swith the most tooling.

If you're going into business I would start contacting places in your area. You should be able to go see the machines run, and can find out all the features they have.

[Nobade]

Start learning about Swiss type screw machines. These are what you would want to make small, very high precision parts like bullets. I used to run a shop full of Star brand machines like this, making body jewelry. I would occasionally run one with leaded bronze and make bullets when it wasn't spoken for and had no problem making pretty much whatever shape I wanted. It would take maybe 20 seconds to make a bullet so before long I would have a big pile of them to play with.

I have often thought if I had one of those machines here at home I would start a web site like Mountain Molds that allowed users to design their own bullets, and that software would produce the tool path to cut them. Custom bullets in amounts of 100 or more I think would sell well.

The main hangup is the stock to make them from. Swiss machines require the stock be centerless ground with no more than .0005 variation in the whole stick. So getting good stock is sometimes tough and/or expensive. But it can be done.

[johnson1942]

a proto type navy sniper rifle about 5 or so years ago used solid brass bullets machined on a regular lathe. it was some type of .40 cal. it shot 16 ft higher at one mile {in drop} than a .50 cal bmg. it shot a tighter group also. the gun smith then had a health crisis and passed away. so nothing more was done with the gun to my knowledge. but when i talked to him on the phone after he tested it i remember he said all the bullets were made on a lathe , were solid brass had a needle sharp point and a flat base. they also weighed 400 grains. a lathe can do alot.

[I'll Make Mine]

That sounds like a .416 Barret I saw on Future Weapons a while back -- parent case is .50 BMG, shortened and necked down to cast a lighter bullet at higher velocity. I'd have thought production rounds would have been a more mass production friendly design, but perhaps not -- it's not like snipers will go through tens of thousands of rounds a year, each, the way a machine gunner might.