Whistler
07-28-2012, 05:55 PM
I'm pretty new to swaging (ok, two days old as a matter of fact), so please bear with me.
When I annealed my first cases for making .40 out of 9mm I tried glowing them with a small propane torch (worked like a charm, but took time), dipping them in molten lead and heating them on my stove. When I tried to swage a few with a core out of WW alloy I realized the alloy was heat treated (water quenched), so in order to remove the hardening I used the propane torch to heat the case so the core melted. Voila, it was soft again and swaging was easy on both the press and my arm.
But to the point. When I dug some bullets out of the berm I found that the ones that were cold swaged had expanded fine but had lost the core. The ones that had had the core melted to remove the hardening (annealed if you will) had the core bonded to the jacket.
Core bonded jacketed bullets jag my memory for two reasons; hunting bullets and bench rest bullets just below solid copper projectiles.
Some people complain of poor accuracy with "one step" swaged bullets, but wouldn't it be easy to anneal the brass and bond the core at the same time? The lead melts at 550 degrees fahrenheit I believe, and isn't that pretty much the temperature we want when annealing? Ease of production and excellence of performance all at once.
But of course I am new in this part of the forum, so please educate me if I'm missing something here.
Recovered from my berm today:
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/6186/20120728155431.jpg
When I annealed my first cases for making .40 out of 9mm I tried glowing them with a small propane torch (worked like a charm, but took time), dipping them in molten lead and heating them on my stove. When I tried to swage a few with a core out of WW alloy I realized the alloy was heat treated (water quenched), so in order to remove the hardening I used the propane torch to heat the case so the core melted. Voila, it was soft again and swaging was easy on both the press and my arm.
But to the point. When I dug some bullets out of the berm I found that the ones that were cold swaged had expanded fine but had lost the core. The ones that had had the core melted to remove the hardening (annealed if you will) had the core bonded to the jacket.
Core bonded jacketed bullets jag my memory for two reasons; hunting bullets and bench rest bullets just below solid copper projectiles.
Some people complain of poor accuracy with "one step" swaged bullets, but wouldn't it be easy to anneal the brass and bond the core at the same time? The lead melts at 550 degrees fahrenheit I believe, and isn't that pretty much the temperature we want when annealing? Ease of production and excellence of performance all at once.
But of course I am new in this part of the forum, so please educate me if I'm missing something here.
Recovered from my berm today:
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/6186/20120728155431.jpg