Primary motivation for swaging jacketed bullets

[JimB..]

My swaged bullets are bonded, and I don't use any flux. I accidentally stumbled onto a method where the core and jacket become one, and the only way to separate them is to melt the lead core away from the jacket. I just anneal the jackets and cores already put together at a temperature of 1,125 degrees F, and let them set over night in the kiln. Evidently, the high temperature and long soak bond them together.





Hope this helps.

Fred

Fred, are you casting a dead soft bullet and just dropping it in each case before cooking? Then tumble off the scale and swage?

[ReloaderFred]

Jim,

The Bhn of my cast cores is 5, which is pretty much pure lead. The one in the picture was from a 158 gr. .38 SWC mold, but I use other molds for different weight bullets.

I clean off the scale by soaking for about half an hour in citric acid solution, then rinsing in very hot water. After they air dry, then I perform the rest of the functions.

You can buy 100% pure citric acid pretty cheaply at Duda Diesel: https://www.dudadiesel.com/search.php?query=citric I bought 10 pounds and split it with a friend who shoots black powder. I've still got enough to probably last the rest of my life, and if I give up swaging, I'll just make lemonade out of the rest of it.

Hope this helps.

Fred

[grullaguy]

I swage bullets just because I can. I like the tools and the process.
I have 1000s of bullets in peanut butter jars around my workshop and probably haven't shot 100 yet.
I might have given away another couple hundred.
I just like making them.

[Huvius]

THAT is about one of the coolest ideas I have seen on the subject!

[ReloaderFred]

Thank you, Huvius. A friend has permanently loaned me the old kiln, and it's really handy. I do wish it was bigger, but it serves it's purpose.

Somebody on here had posted several years back that they were annealing their cases with the cores already in, so I decided to give it a try. I wasn't sure what temperature actually worked the best, since there are several different temperatures mentioned in the various threads. I had watched a video of the process that Starline uses to manufacture their brass cases, and they mentioned that their belt fed kiln is at 1,150 degrees F. I figured they know a lot more about annealing brass than I do, so I started heating my cases and cores to that temperature, and it works. The kiln is so well insulated, that it needs overnight to cool enough to remove the pan, and even at that, it's still over 250 degrees F. the next morning. (that was read with an infrared thermometer, since it still felt hot when I opened the lid)

When I shot the bullets from the first batch done this way, I noticed right away there wasn't any separation of the core from the jacket after impacting the dirt berm. I've since conducted experiments by shooting into various materials, and the lead is completely bonded to the brass jacket. Even the bullets I fired into the top 1/3 of used propane tanks to ventilate them before cutting for smelting pots didn't separate.

I didn't want to put solder resin through my dies, since it's basically acid, and this accomplished what I intended without the use of resins. And like I've mentioned in the past, it was accidental that it worked out this way. I can't take credit for figuring out a miracle method for bonding cores, because I just stumbled into it by accident. I'm just happy that I don't have to add anything to the process to accomplish fully bonded bullets.

Hope this helps.

Fred

[Bazoo]

Thanks for sharing Fred.