Advice for starting in swaging

[63 Shiloh]

Hi Fellers,

I have looked at Corbins site and the money required is a little out of my budget.

I am wanting to try my hand at swaging .38/.357 SWC lead boolits. I would then imagine I would need a knurling tool for lube retention.

Not going to try jackets as yet, however, would like the tools to do so in the future. I have thousands of once fired 9mm cases, not sure if they can be used in the .38/.357 jacket material.

Another calibre I am interested in is 45/70 swaged boolits, once again, lead only at first. I am undecided on whether to go .459" knurled boolit for my Marlin XLR or .452" and PP the boolit.

Now, I will be putting up some gear for trade once I have an idea of what I need to do the above swaging.

I have a FreeChex III in .44, a 4 cav Saeco 122gn BB 9mm mold and a master caster 9mm DC mold for my trade items.

Any advice appreciated.


Mike

[jgt]

I have never had any luck with swaged lead bullets. All the one's I used leaded my barrels excessively. If I were going to do something along those lines I would opt for paper patching the bullet. Your mileage may vary.

Your fired cases will be good for jacket material after they are annealed so hang on to them untill you learn a bit more and you will be glad you did. Read the back pages on this forum and you will see that BT Sniper makes excellent swaging dies and press add-ons for swaging. His customer service and integrity is exempliry, first rate, hard to beat, excellent, or what ever glowing phrases that can be thought up.

Swaging a bullet is not cut and dried. It is more of a "whatever you can dream up" kind of a hobby. You can make your own press and dies if you are handy with machinery and know how to use it. If you are like me and know it is more advantagous to purchase it then there are a varity of sorces. There are corbin/walnut hill presses that are wonderful but expensive and involve a long wait and luck to obtain. Corbin (both brothers) sell swaging dies. There are die makers that cater to bench rest shooters with unlimited funds that sell carbide dies that cost two to five thousand dollars a set. You can find them by googling bench rest swaging die makers. There is C-H Tool, their dies are inexpensive and are good entry level dies, and they sell a swaging press in a moderate price range for swaging and reloading. This company also sells a nice channelure tool (knurling tool). Next there is Larry Blackmon of West Monroe, La. Larry is a dentist who sells dies as a sideline. His presses and dies are mediam priced and good equiptment. He also sells gas checks and bullet jackets. The name of his enterprise is Bullet Swaging Supply. Write him for his brochure and he can fix you up. From time to time you can find equipment from long out of business HERTERS. This stuff is bull strong but you have to be careful about what is offered because most of the dies were for half-jacketed bullets that were popular at the time HERTERS was in business. Their nine ton presses were good presses but have to be adapted to use dies available today. There are also many good die sets that were made by little known machinist from past periods. Let the buyer beware. Go at a gentle pace and keep you eyes open and your ear to the ground and you can put together a useful aray of tools to fill your need.

I use a combination of these tools and mix and match as my needs dictate. I do the same with reloading tools. Jump in the water is fine. Welcome to the site. We will be looking forward to seeing your progress in the future.

[scrapcan]

63 Shiloh,

I think another issue for you willbe the shipping into you. If you hav ea machinist in your area you could see if they can make you some stuff to play with. There is a small pamphlet that I was given that I scanned and made available to our members. it is not the end all be all,l but it will give one an idea of what needs to be done to make a set of dies.

You should be able to find it by seraching my user name and SAS or ted smith. for LSWC style bullets, you only need one die. The die is straight thru and uses a top punch to shape the nose and bottom punch for the base. All of these types will end up with a shapr shoulder due to the top punch.

If you are willing to part with some money or your goods, you may be able to get a set of c-h swage dies when they are available.

[BwBrown]

Lead bullets? If I hold velocity below 800 fps, leading isn't a problem. Then there are gas checks, half jackets and full jacket boolits.

It's all a matter if time, money and ingenuity. If the only reason we reload was to save money, well, there are times, except for the small (?) fortune we (I've) spent on tools needed and wanted.

Reloading - holding up a shell saying "I made this myself," but really taking components somebody else made and putting them together.

So we cast or swage our own slugs, with tools someone else made.

So we build our own presses, and begin talking about carving out our own dies.

Self-sufficiency is defined as how far we are able or willing to take it.

Then we have to shoot'em.

I spent one winter building a flint-lock rifle, well, assembling parts others have made.

My son spent a couple weeks assisting a local hobby blacksmith hammer out a rolled steel barrel.

The beauty of the hobby is that we can always take it one step further - I love it!

Now if we can figure out how to make our own (not the wood match-head trick) primers and powder...

[63 Shiloh]

Thanks fellers,

So, swaged lead boolits are just going to give me grief in my 38/ .357 at anything above 800fps I see.

OK, that has helped me make the decision that I need to be able to swage boolit with a jacket.

I do have a local machinist, I printed the 'lets make a swage press' post and went and saw him. He can get the steel required at a cheaper price than me. The plan is to help him out as much as I can with the build, I will need to use his machines.

I have looked on the Internet for any plans/ drawings of swaging dies that I can use to try and make my own, not much luck.

I will have a look at the pamphlet suggested by manleyjt.

Thanks for the info,


Mike

[DukeInFlorida]

I cast some 9mm (147 grain) FN bullets, and then size lube those with my wax based fav lube.

Finally, I run them into a SWC swage tool, which bumps them up to 357 Mag/.38 spec diameter, and changes the nose from a FN to a semi wad cutter. They load and shoot great in my Ruger GP100. Never any leading issues. Diameter and lube have a lot to do with avoiding leading.