.500

[tiger762]

Sounds good. The only thing I was worried about was the little bit thicker web in the GAP. Wasn't sure if the expander would be able to swell it out or if the result would be egg shaped. I used to swage 40S&W into 44mag with my C&H dies. Was using a reloading press. Those definitely were coming out egg shaped, but still shot OK.

45 gap would work just fine for 500 cal bullets

BT

[tiger762]

Also, can someone with a machinist's straight edge look at how cylindrical the finished product is? When the expanding mandrel does its magic, it starts to encounter thicker brass near the inside bottom of the case.

Does the case rim need to be preserved to pull the expanded case out of the die? I'd like to make up a vise jig to hold 10-12 cases at a time and endmill the rim off, to make the jacket shorter and maybe make the brass easier to swell out to 0.500". The fear of gas cutting on the barrel is what concerns me with having a bullet that is a truncated ellipsoid.

[IllinoisCoyoteHunter]

Notice about 1/2 down the bearing surface there is a tiny wasp waist (pic #1..look real hard). I have tried a harder lead in the core seat die to try to push it out...and tried point forming it a bit harder and can't seem to get it to go away. It is so small it shouldn't affect the performance at all. Plus, think about cast bullets with lube grooves...

And please disregard the jacket that was not cut squarely...

Here is how you square it up....

[BT Sniper]

Looks good. I see you figured out how to square the meplat! Since our bullets still have the rim we can mount them in a standard case trimmer and remove/square the meplat as much as we like.


Good shooting

BT

[tiger762]

Excellent! Thank you! That's what I've wanted to see. I've always been concerned about having a very narrow angle between bearing surface and bore. Not talking about boat tail or the usual small radius that most jacketed pistol bullets will have but rather a wedge shaped void that gas pressure can get in and wreak havoc with. Seems like that would really fry the rifling just forward of the chamber...

Notice about 1/2 down the bearing surface there is a tiny wasp waist (pic #1..look real hard). I have tried a harder lead in the core seat die to try to push it out...and tried point forming it a bit harder and can't seem to get it to go away. It is so small it shouldn't affect the performance at all. Plus, think about cast bullets with lube grooves...

[IllinoisCoyoteHunter]

Are you talking about the wedge that the rim creates?

[tiger762]

More like, from how the brass gets thicker towards the bottom and the core seat process just can't generate enough pressure to expand it out. Not just the rim, but forward of the extractor groove. There will be some transition from base diameter of the original case to the diameter of the finished bullet. I've thought about milling off the rim and extractor groove part of the brass to make the core seat process more effective. But then, that's a lot of extra work. I have a CH #101 in 0.429 that I used to use 40S&W in. Only thing that helps is annealing the heck out of the brass and using the softest lead possible.

[IllinoisCoyoteHunter]

I am hoping that with higher pressure loads the heavily annelaed brass and dead soft lead will seal the bore better instead of having gas cutting.