How did you do that?
The unexamined life is not worth living....Socrates
Pain, is just weakness leaving the body....USMC
Fast is fine, but accuracy is FINAL!....Wyatt Earp
That's odd , especially in a straight wall steel die .
Pain is weakness leaving .......this 5? arthritis is going to just add another Greek to my list below .
In the time of darkest defeat,our victory may be nearest. Wm. McKinley.
I was young and stupid then I'm older now. Me 1992 .
Richard Lee Hart 6/29/39-7/25/18
Without trial we cannot learn and grow . It is through our stuggles that we become stronger .
Brother I'm going to be Pythagerus , DiVinci , and Atlas all rolled into one soon .
Greetings,
I am not, nor do I have the access to, a Material Scientist that can analyze the fracture to determine what caused the fault.
Personally??? I think it was a crack that developed in the heat treat process. Again, I have no resources to do magnetic particle inspection.
What was I doing when it failed???
I was swaging 99 grain 25:1 Lead:Tin slugs into 98 grain HBWC bullets. I heard a "crack" during one press cycle and thought I broke a link pin. Taking the linkage apart all looked well and I continued. The second bullet went "crack" and the die was now visibly damaged. I needed a small strap wrench to remove the two halves.
The die was machined from O-1 tool steel and tempered to 62 HRC. I might try a piece of A-6 or A-10, if I have any left in the shop. At least a less severe quench.
My press is the Corbin S Silver model I bought back in the mid '90's.
Cheers,
Dave
I broke a couple of corbins years ago. they broke the same way. too much pressure or weak from a lot of use.
I guess im lucky, I get all my lead from the 22 section of the shooting gallery. Ive heard allot of horror stories of guys swaging alloyed lead and popping dies..
Greetings,
I also buy salvage 22lr metal. Oddly, it is harder than 25:1 alloy.
If I mix the salvage metal 50:50 with pure Lead, it swages a bit better.
The Lead:Tin alloys actually flow better for forming the Hollow Base bullets.
Cheers,
Dave
Greetings jmcburn,
Thanks for the alloy suggestion. However, my furnace is old and I limit the temperature to 1600 degrees F.
I may machine a replacement out of A6 as I have some stock remaining from a previous project.
I have been using O1 for years and I suspect this die failed the quench.
As far as high resolution photos, I do not have a suitable camera.
Many thanks,
Dave
Another suggestion would be to NOT knurl the outside of the die. Knurling makes stress spots in the body and helps to make it crack on quenching. Don't ask me how I found that out .
Lafaun
Just staying at home and playing with multi-color boolits.
I've seen the last threads on splitting dies, I'm currently making a core sizing die and was wondering if 2 or 3 bleed holes would be better, although I'm only using pure lead for cores.
BP | Bronze Point | IMR | Improved Military Rifle | PTD | Pointed |
BR | Bench Rest | M | Magnum | RN | Round Nose |
BT | Boat Tail | PL | Power-Lokt | SP | Soft Point |
C | Compressed Charge | PR | Primer | SPCL | Soft Point "Core-Lokt" |
HP | Hollow Point | PSPCL | Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" | C.O.L. | Cartridge Overall Length |
PSP | Pointed Soft Point | Spz | Spitzer Point | SBT | Spitzer Boat Tail |
LRN | Lead Round Nose | LWC | Lead Wad Cutter | LSWC | Lead Semi Wad Cutter |
GC | Gas Check |