Centered pin in the top pucnch to HP boolit

[TCLouis]

Can one form enough of a dimple/HP in a flat nose bullet with a pin centered in the middle of a top punch to have any impact on boolit expansion?

[Forrest r]

You'd be better off investing in a forester case trimmer that has the hp tool. I've bought 2 of them on ebay used with a bunch of accessories for $100 shipped.

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That is a lyman 429422 hb swc that I used a 60* center drill in the forester trimmer to make the hp in that bullet. A side view of the same recovered bullet.
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That bullet was shot in a snubnosed 44spl/1000fps+ top left load
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[gwpercle]

To form the HP the lead would need to be very soft .

Most often HP's are drilled into cast boolits or even loaded rounds .

Forster Products makes hollow pointing kits ... one used by hand and another used with their case trimmer ( I have an old hand tool ) , check them out at
www.forsterproducts.com , the hollow pointing tools work quite well .
Gary

[Super Sneaky Steve]

I can't argue with success but if you want to cut a HP it needs to be perfectly center. Any deviation and it would be like a wheel without wheelweights going down the road. Very wobbly. An MP mould will give you perfect hollow points without any extra work.

[THE_ANTIDOTE]

If I already have a few flat nose bullets cast and don't want to set up the smelter and molds to make a few hollow point bullets, I use my set of Warrior countersink bits and do them by hand. Start slow, but true...your lead must be pretty soft.

[Forrest r]

I can't argue with success but if you want to cut a HP it needs to be perfectly center. Any deviation and it would be like a wheel without wheelweights going down the road. Very wobbly. An MP mould will give you perfect hollow points without any extra work.

Actually the hp doesn't need to be perfectly centered in handgun or short range bullets. A couple of years ago I did testing with 150gr swaged hp's in a 4" bbl'd 357 mag. 1/2 the hp's were centered the other have had a 5* tilt in the hp (5* bend in the hp pin). I wanted to have less penetration with the hp's.
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@ 25yds there was no difference in accuracy. The strait hp hole went thru 9"/10" of wet newspack. The angled hp hole went thru 6"/7" of wet newspack.

I played around with these lee rn bullets and a cheap home made swaging die turning the rn bullets into hbwc's for the 32cal's.
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This was a loose fitting hb pin/not centered and those hbwc's shot clover leaf's @ 25yfs.

[country gent]

While it could/can be done, it will be much more than just a pin in a lubrisizer. The amount of force to push the point in will take at least a good reloading presses force. The point form will be a heavy piece to form the hollow point and nose, with out support on the out side the nose will expand and deform. This will carry thru down into the driving bands so the body will also need to be supported. The tooling would need to be a swage type set up. With the displacement for the hollow point and nose forming you may loose grease grooves in the forming also.

Drilling with a fixture and a drill, standard or a form, D drill. will be the way to go faster and easier.It could be done in a small drill press.
A base to hold the bullet square and true, the drill sleeved up to the body diameter. set bullet in the base and clamp run drill in to depth remove bullet.

It is easier to pour what you want and works better. You can also pour bullets with a softer nose with a small ladle of a measured amount.A smaller pot with pure lead and the small ladle. Then add the harder alloy on top. The small ladle is custom made and can be made from an empty case. The rest is just pouring quickly and as you normally would.

I ladle cast these in a biger dipper pot with the smaller pot sitting in it. A pure lead light tin alloy in the smaller pot. I pour the pure lead then as quick as comfortable pour the harder base alloy in on top of it. Here I pour a full ladle into the sprue letting the excess run back in the pot to keep it hot and get a good bond.