Joined the swaging crowd, sort of

[texassako]

Swaging has intrigued me for a while; so yesterday I made a simple die to squeeze some home cast .400" round balls I had laying around from a lead deal into little wadcutters for my 9.4 Dutch revolver. Light .379" bullets are not exactly common. Basically, the die is a cut down Pacific .220 Swift seater die (I have a bucket full of junk dies) with the threaded portion reamed to .379", the neck portion of the die left intact to guide the punch, and the punch turned to fit the neck and reamed portions closely with the end cut for the nose profile. It also worked well turning a little 115 gr .38 wadcutter into shorter, fatter .379" wadcutters. I just use my HF arbor press to mash these little cylinders, but need to turn a depth stop or two for consistent results. I left them with a tiny bit of a bevel base from starting out round for easier loading.

[Mauser 98K]

that is about how i did my first swage system, with my arbor press. what i did was turned a step on the swage punch where i slid a collar that bottomed out on the step and would bottom out on the die as a stop so all my bullets came out the same.. now that im using a pneumatic press i still use the same stop system i used on the arbor press. this is my .311 die set, you can see the swage punch with the stop on it..

[texassako]

Turned some other pieces to go with it tonight, couple of depth stops and a spacer. Realized I can also use this to make some .379" heeled bullets with a few more pieces.