.390 wire

[JRLesan]

Have a roll of .390 wire that I'd like to size down to .365 or so to use for cores. Occurs to me that I could cut appropriate length slugs (weight wise) and then draw the slugs using some form of push thru sizer. Would need a wide mouthed sizer die. Not worth spending much money on the project as the 25# roll is only worth $50.00 or so but hate to look at it on the shelf for the rest of my days. Ideas????

[clodhopper]

You would have to have the whole slug captive, to avoid just shearing the center through the size die.

You might be able to cut the wire too weight and roll the slug between two flat plates and reduce the diameter.
If you had a couple spacers .365 thick between the plates the cores might have better uniformity.

[garandsrus]

Wire is reduced in diameter by pulling the wire through a tapered hole that goes down to what you want. Potentially a series of holes. I have no idea how much force is involved though. Make sure you use some type of lube.

[JRLesan]

Was thinking more along the lines of using an existing bottleneck cartridge case sizing die, squaring the shoulder area if necessary, and making a punch to force slugs up into and thru neck area. Don't know if die could stand pressure of cold lead extrusion but easy enough to heat slugs and/or find out the hard way.

[clodhopper]

I have a die like that, you push a 44 caliber bullet in, and .1875 wire come out.

It works, but it's some work. I warm the die up with a heat lamp, and warm the .44 bullets up with a wax heater, the kind that's used to perfume up the house.

To extrude the lead, the die must be set to where the press cam over is, press a bit, then screwed in a bit more and camed over again. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Should go easier if you make wire bigger than .1875 diameter.

The interior walls of my die are cylindrical, not very many cartridge cases do not have a taper.

[garandsrus]

Some people have used reloading presses to produce cores/wire from other bullets/slugs. From what I remember, it doesn’t work very well. The max pressure in a press doesn’t have much stroke so you keep adjusting the die downward and use multiple strokes. The wire ends up as short pieces also.

[clodhopper]

Some people have used reloading presses to produce cores/wire from other bullets/slugs. From what I remember, it doesn’t work very well. The max pressure in a press doesn’t have much stroke so you keep adjusting the die downward and use multiple strokes. The wire ends up as short pieces also.

I also had some fear of wearing the threads out on the press.

[JRLesan]

Looking to put .390 wire in and get .365 wire out using 175 grain pieces. Suspect WH press is up to the task...

[garandsrus]

You will need to have the exit hole in the die at whatever diameter you want and then have the main hole in the die a little larger than .390 so that the wire feeds in easily. The punch that presses on the wire will need to match the hole in the die. It will certainly work in a Walnut Hill press and you aren’t reducing the diameter that much. It has a longer stroke at high pressure than a reloading press.

It would be great if you could get two cores from every one you start with. The die body will need to be pretty long for that. It will also be interested to see if the individual cores bond together to make one long wire. I don’t think they will.

[huntnman]

Garandsrus you are correct I have a wire extruding, die I use a 44 caliber cast to make wire for 224 cores every time I place a new slug in the die there will be weak joint that always breaks. They sometimes look okay but always fail.