Lathe Collet for Cast Boolits

[eagle27]

Thought I could share my lathe collet setup for holding cast boolits. I use it for quickly turning a gas check shoulder on cast plain base 404 boolits but it could also be useful if wanting to hollow point boolits using a lathe.

It is just my RCBS bullet puller body with a bolt to tighten the collet instead of the handle. The body turns perfectly true when locked in the lathe three jaw chuck and uses a cheap socket welded to T handle rod to go down through the hollow lathe spindle to tighten and release the puller collet. I can spin gas check shoulders on my 404 slug bases at about 2 or 3 a minute so not a long process to do a box full and they turn out perfect for crimping and sizing 44 cal checks to the boolit bases.
Obviously any calibre boolit can be processed with the same setup using the correct calibre collet.

Hope this maybe helpful to someone.

http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt146/Lindsayb_01/collet003.jpg
http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt146/Lindsayb_01/collet001.jpg

[No_1]

That is a great idea!

R.

[edsmith]

Good thinking, I like that. no pulling the chuck to use a collet. great.

[Euan]

Good idea eagle27. I like it.
Cheers Euan

[x101airborne]

good on ya, ole boy!! i was on a similar track, just hadn't gotten there yet. i was looking to hollow point some 41 rounds for my wife.

[jhrosier]

Funny how things seem to balance out sometimes.

I just stopped in to renew my Cast Boolits subscription and this thread instantly paid me back for my small contribution.[smilie=w:

Great idea & thanks!

Jack

[Bullshop]

Is that boolit from a nose pour mold?

[eagle27]

Is that boolit from a nose pour mold?

Yes a Hoch 400gr nose pour for my 404J made up for me back in '78. For whatever reason I did not think about a gas check bullet and have never had much success with the 400gr plain base bullet grouping other than one light load of slow burning powder which I was always wary of.

Von gruff, who posts here, borrowed my mould to cast up some boolits when he was making up his 404 and had better success than I in his Mauser. He then got a Hoch 350gr GC mould made to his special profile which throws beautiful boolits and these also perform superbly in my own Mauser 404.
Got me thinking and hence I now cast plain base and then GC once I've cut a shoulder on the base for Hornady 44cal checks as pictured in my post (shoulder looks a little rough as I prized the GC off the base for the photo).

[bearcove]

Good idea. I have a bunch of brass solids that I was going to turn down to a size I use. Hadn't thought of an easy way to hold them. Problem solved!

Thank you for sharing.

[dverna]

Excellent idea. Thanks for the post.

Don Verna

[Von Gruff]

Eagle, good to see you on board. You are going to like it here and will fit right in with the very knoweledgable and highly inventive gents who are the forum members.

Von Gruff.

[Dutchman]

I thought I was good at innovative work holding solutions but I never thought of this one :).

The only thing I would do different is use the 7/8" 5C collet.

I do have that same collet puller so I'll have to explore this hollow pointing angle.

This forum has lots of home machinists, like me, so please don't hesitate to share here.

Dutch

[KCSO]

Great minds run... I made one just about like that for my mill to hollow point bullets for testing. I can lock it in and vary the diameter and depth of the hollow point with the mill settings.

[Centaur 1]

One of these days I'm going to get a Hardinge tool room lathe for my garage. The only bad thing about being a retired toolmaker is that I no longer have the ability to do whatever I want, whenever I want. I have to admit that if I had started casting boolits before I retired, I probably would have been fired for making molds instead of working. I used to program all my g-jobs in Mazatrol while the machine was running and I'd plan ahead and make sure that the tools I needed were in the carousel. When I finished machining a job I would put in my g-job, find my z axis, and it would machine my part while I did some de-burring. I look at the threads on this site the ideas just start flowing.