Point Form Die Only?

[thehouseproduct]

I want to make 22lr brass into 224 bullets. I can derim with a tweaked Lee 224 sizer. I can cast pure lead cores with a bator mold. If I place the boolits in the clean derimmed cases and anneal, will that allow mento skip the core seat die and put them in the point form die directly?

[martin]

Thehouseproduct,

The ususal process that occurs is that the core seating operation expands the jacket to the proper dimension (about .0005 less than the point forming die) prior to the point forming operation. I don't think what you are suggesting would produce the same results unless I am missing somthing. Your suggestion would form bullets no doubt but they may not be what you want as they would likely not be fully formed.

Martin

[thehouseproduct]

Your suggestion would form bullets no doubt but they may not be what you want as they would likely not be fully formed.

Martin
Or at best I wouldn't have fully formed bullets without a great deal more pressure than normal.....

[MIBULLETS]

The only way I think that skipping the core seating operation would work well would be if you planed to make a lead tiped bullet and had a closed off die, so you could build the pressure up and form the bullet to size. I have seen a point form die like this before and the ejection punch was larger than normal and had the shape of the bullet tip machined into it. Actually I think the die and punch were machined or at least lapped while put together so the transition from the die to the ejection punch was as smooth as possible.

[michiganvet]

I can tell you the sequence in my die set. The jacket with the swaged core goes base first into the core seating die and uses one of the two different core seating punches depending on whether I am using rf jackets or the smaller one for commercial jackets which have thicker walls. The seated core assy then goes nose first into the point forming die and just enough pressure is applied to get the amount of closure desired on the tip. Too much pressure and you send the die back to the manufacturer to get the stuck bullet taken out. If I was making lead tip bullets which I can't for lack of a lead tip die you put in a larger core which will extrude lead past the tip to shaped in a lead tip die with extremely light pressure. If you tried to seat cores in a point forming die I suspect you would collapse the jacket instead of seating the core. You may be using a die set totally unlike mine and yours may be designed to allow that but I can't imagine how that would work.

[thehouseproduct]

I can tell you the sequence in my die set. The jacket with the swaged core goes base first into the core seating die and uses one of the two different core seating punches depending on whether I am using rf jackets or the smaller one for commercial jackets which have thicker walls. The seated core assy then goes nose first into the point forming die and just enough pressure is applied to get the amount of closure desired on the tip. Too much pressure and you send the die back to the manufacturer to get the stuck bullet taken out. If I was making lead tip bullets which I can't for lack of a lead tip die you put in a larger core which will extrude lead past the tip to shaped in a lead tip die with extremely light pressure. If you tried to seat cores in a point forming die I suspect you would collapse the jacket instead of seating the core. You may be using a die set totally unlike mine and yours may be designed to allow that but I can't imagine how that would work.
I dont mean to seat cores, I mean that I will melt the lead into the case. can I just do the final forming with the point form?

[DukeInFlorida]

You won't get any kind of consistency trying to do it that way. And, it;s also a pain in the butt, and very messy.

The concept of using a core is to control weight, and make it easy to run.


I dont mean to seat cores, I mean that I will melt the lead into the case. can I just do the final forming with the point form?

[MIBULLETS]

thehouseproduct,

you could possibly do it if the de-rimed cases were the right diameter for the point forming die before you melt the lead in them. The jacket and core NEED to be, very very close to final diameter before entering the point form die. The reason is that a normal point form die really doesn't put much pressure into expanding the bullet diameter with a 22 bullet. With some of the flat tip point form dies for larger bullets, like the CH design, you can do that because the ejection punch is much larger and sits in the proper position for this.