I'm new at casting but experienced in the plastics industry. As I research lubing, paper-patching, jacket swaging, and gas-checking, it struck me that for muzzle-loading, many bullets come with plastic sabots (a .45 bullet saboted up to .50). Having the education and a decade's experience in polymers, what's to keep me from putting some R&D into simple, cheap plastic sabots that one could use with swaged bullets. For example, a lead bullet could be swaged to say .330 and then pressed into a non-discarding sabot bringing it up to .357 and then loaded into a 9mm case. What am I missing here? I'm not talking about driving a plastic sabot at 3000fps. I'm thinking more along the lines of 9mm and .45 slow but heavy bullets for target shooting. It would eliminate leading and the lubing process and would allow for non-cast, swaged bullets to be made. High-temp plastics are no problem and they can be made with "squashing" rather than "smearing" properties. What am I missing? Should I just stick to designing more plastic caps that go on the ends of canes? Even after the dies are built, I could produce 1000 little sabot cups and sell them for under $10. Tell me why I shouldn't even try.
Brett
Milwaukee