jacketed swaged wadcutters

[sv44]

i want to make 44 sp and 45 colt wadcutters out of swaged pure lead with a jacket. set up with a corbin outfit and i am interested to know if any of you guys have done that?

[rancher1913]

go to btsnipers page in vendor sponsor and look at what all he has done.

[475AR]

I played with jacketed wadcutter bullets along time ago. They are easy to make and Corbin makes a top punch if you want to do a button head wc. I never got the top punch but was able to use an swc top punch, it worked fine. I also did hp wc, which exploded water jugs impressively. What do you plan to use them for? For punching paper, I found out that the plain lead was just fine although I kept speed in the 800-850fps.

[sv44]

that's all i really do so thank you

[sv44]

thanks much

[sv44]

one question. do you recall using lube of some sort on those plain lead wadcutters? any problem with leading ?

[475AR]

I used a bit of Lee lube on them as well as knurling them beforehand to help hold the lube better. Although today I would PC or Hi-tech coat them and save the mess of living them.

[sv44]

so i started with pure lead and as expected had terrible leading (i don't know why i thought id get by with that). i've since started to use Ben's liquid lube mixture and the leading is much better . this is, to be clear, pure wadcutter, not the jacketed kind. i am considering the jacket to eliminate the leading or i will go the Powder coat route- there is something so appealing to swaging the bullet i can use almost immediately
(but each of these steps has mad me realize this won't be so)
thanks

[Wheelguns 1961]

Powdercoating is real easy and cheap to get started. Go to the vendor section and look up smoke4320. It tells you alot about the process. Good luck!

[sv44]

thanks

[yeahbub]

Jacketed wadcutters with soft cores sounds like potentially a good defensive option, particularly in HP configuration. Seems like a lot of work and resources for just plinking or target work. I once read a long NRA article about cast lead VS. swaged lead accuracy and swaged won, hands down, so if you have the equipment, cranking out experimental quantities seems easy enough. You can use existing cast as your raw material. If they're already lubed, so much the better. A coating of BLL or Lee liquid alox is probably the simplest lube and works well with swaged too, but if they're smooth cylinders, it may be useful to roll them with a file to give them some surface texture for the lube to hang onto, unless you already have a knurling tool to put grooves in them. I also used a card wad and lube cookie to leave a lube film in the barrel as the boolit left which anoints the barrel for the next one, and leading at those mid-range velocities and pressures essentially disappeared. This also works with stouter loads I used for dirt clods, cow pies and osage oranges, but develop such loads cautiously due to the reduced case volume. I commonly would swage commercial cast to a HP configuration or to reform the profile to something more useful to me. Keep us informed of your results.

[flyingmonkey35]

45 colt for me

I shoot both powder coat and Lee liquid lube.

both show no leading when I use slower loads


of course I use trail boss and black powder.

soo their is that

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

[sv44]

Jacketed wadcutters with soft cores sounds like potentially a good defensive option, particularly in HP configuration. Seems like a lot of work and resources for just plinking or target work. I once read a long NRA article about cast lead VS. swaged lead accuracy and swaged won, hands down, so if you have the equipment, cranking out experimental quantities seems easy enough. You can use existing cast as your raw material. If they're already lubed, so much the better. A coating of BLL or Lee liquid alox is probably the simplest lube and works well with swaged too, but if they're smooth cylinders, it may be useful to roll them with a file to give them some surface texture for the lube to hang onto, unless you already have a knurling tool to put grooves in them. I also used a card wad and lube cookie to leave a lube film in the barrel as the boolit left which anoints the barrel for the next one, and leading at those mid-range velocities and pressures essentially disappeared. This also works with stouter loads I used for dirt clods, cow pies and osage oranges, but develop such loads cautiously due to the reduced case volume. I commonly would swage commercial cast to a HP configuration or to reform the profile to something more useful to me. Keep us informed of your results.

if i jacket these, i need to remove the lube that was used to create the core in the first place. seating these in a jacket, would i need lube for this? kinda confused.
and , you are so right, seems like a lot of work for target shooting but i like making things that would work if needed in a sd situation.
i think im gonna try the jackets as well as powder coating the original wadcutter and seeing how this works for me
thanks

[sv44]

what are you shooting -pure lead, swaged, cast? i have been trying to get the velocity down and using power pistol.

[Pipefitter]

Depending on what Corbin set up you have (I have the mega-mite press, same dies as the hydro press) you could reform 44 SWC (already lubed) into 45 wadcutters . A few years back I was gifted a partial box of 44 240gn SWC that i "bumped up" to .452 swc and they shot just fine, lube stayed in the groove.

[sv44]

thank you -thats what i have hoping to get some made up soon

[yeahbub]

If you're going to use cast boolits for cores in a jacket, they should have no lube on them at all. A naked casting will crush down in your core seating die so you have an homogenous material for the core. If there's other stuff in there of a different density, you'll have an unbalanced bullet. You can swage cast/sized/lubed commercial boolits just as they are, no jacket, and turn them into something more interesting, like a RN's to HP's, RNFP to a wider (or narrower) meplat, RN's to wadcutters, etc., whatever you have the needed heel and nose punch shapes for, but the lube grooves need to be full on all of them so all your boolits will swage the same and be consistent. The lube in the grooves is non-compressible and will maintain a consistent volume for swaging consistently, one boolit to the next. Jacketed bullets should have nothing in them but the lead you use for the core - unless you want to experiment making, I dunno, plastic core practice bullets or something.

Hey, here's a trick; To install a gas check on a plain base cast/lubed boolit, I put the boolit in the die backwards and swage enough ogive on the heel that it will enter the gas check easily, eject the now-boattailed cast, turn it around, add a gas check and swage it for real, filling out the gas check and swaging it to the new nose shape. Voila! A gas check perfectly fitted to a cast boolit that has the profile I want. Sure is fun treating lead like Playdough.

[sv44]

thank you sir, lots of fun for sure
my goal is to just use soft pure lead, swaged to a core size that is appropriate, remove the lube used in the swaging process and then seat them in the jacket.
haven't made wadcutters this way and was curious if anyone had
thanks again

[megasupermagnum]

I've never swaged wadcutters, but the few I tried for 44 caliber was an adjustable mold that cast a cylinder of lead. You adjusted the mold so it cast just a little more lead than you needed. Then you dropped that in a jacket, and swaged it. Mine makes either a JSP or JHP.

Even in 44 magnum, I found if anything they shot worse than a good cast bullet. Pure lead cast bullets should work just fine in standard 44 special or 45 colt unless you are doing something wrong. If trying to push those cartridges beyond standard pressures, just a little tin goes a long way. 20-1 alloy, or range scrap should work just fine with no leading.

[sv44]

I made some jacketed wadcutters, .452 will give the a shot and see how they do.