Remember removing your FIRST jacketed bullet stuck in the pointing die?

[aaronraad]

midnight's post http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?195743-Removing-bullet-stuck-in-point-form-die inspired me to start this thread...for something a little different.

In the beginning, alone at my workbench one evening, I found myself with a partially ejected, jacketed bullet in my pointing die and a collapsed ejection pin. So I read my swaging notes again and cut-to-length and replaced my 0.062" ejection pin wire. I pushed the partially ejected bullet back into the die and then adjusted down the boat tail punch hoping to close the tip a bit further. Several pieces of ejection pin wire later and a few choice words, I was still not operational.

I had such high hopes for the 308 cal 14-S secant carbide pointing die. Swaging equipment disappears for months in Australia, especailly if it has to go to a third party overseas, so I sucked it up and pulled the die out of the ram again. This time it went into the bench vice with a couple of pieces of masonite to protect it from the jaws. Out came the cordless Bosch drill and a 1/8" drill bit. I drilled through the boat tail and into the lead core about 3/8". I screwed in a 8gx11/2" treated pine wood screw by hand with a philips head screwdriver and stopped after a few threads when it was tight. I then grabbed the 20oz claw hammer and leavered out the screw and bullet attached. I was finally relieved after I cleaned out the die and inspected it to find nothing untoward. I put everything down and walked away for 48hrs, wondering what I had gotten myself into. I've since pulled a half sand bucket (golf divots) worth of bullets since, for a whole bunch of reasons, using different methods, but I think everyone remebers their first.

Please feel free to share your moment or just add innuedo!:wink:

[Bent Ramrod]

I found an old SAS die set at a gun show for pretty cheap. This was because there was a bullet stuck in the point forming die. The ejector pin had gone through the bottom of the jacket and the usual recommended procedures didn't work. Corbin had already refused to work on another SAS die when I asked them earlier, so sending to a manufacturer (the only one I knew about) for repair wasn't in the cards. I got the ejector pin assembly and the stop ring off the die, but the die itself was pretty useless. I was afraid to dry drilling or tapping the bullet because I had no faith I would not hit the side of the die.

I worked as a Chemist at a high-tech research lab at the time and was griping about my poor "bargain" to one of the Metallurgists there. He said that if the die was made from hardened high-carbon steel, cold concentrated nitric acid ought to dissolve the bullet jacket and probably the lead without any damage to the die.

Nitric acid is rather peculiar stuff. Unless it is diluted with water, it doesn't function like an "acid" so much as a very powerful oxidizer. The concentrated stuff is shipped in aluminum drums, which would disappear in seconds if the acid was diluted. However, when concentrated, the acid oxidizes the aluminum to a thin layer of aluminum oxide, which protects the metal from further action. The Metallurgist told me that since hard steel resists oxidation, the acid should have little effect on the surface other than possibly passivizing it with a one-molecule thick oxide layer. However, it should dissolve copper, zinc and lead very rapidly by oxidation of the metals and dissolving the resultant oxides. He recommended putting the die in the acid, waiting until the reaction was over, taking the die out and flooding it with water, checking with pH paper until the water was neutral.

Well, it seemed like a desperation measure, but the die was pretty useless as it was, and I would not be out much if the experiment failed. I put a small beaker of the 100% nitric acid we used for nitration reactions into the fume hood, and lowered the die into the liquid with tongs. There was a furious fizzing around the die hole, with red fumes rising and the liquid turning yellow-green. When the fizzing stopped, I took the die out, ran water over it for five minutes, confirmed neutrality with pH paper, sprayed it with CRC and wiped it out. A look at the point forming cavity under our binocular microscope showed no pitting, ringing, or any trace of the bullet. The outside of the die was similarly pristine.

I would not recommend this practice as a routine method of removing stuck bullets from dies, but, as Hunter Thompson said in another context, "It worked for me.":shock:

[MightyThor]

Age 15. First stuck bullet was my fifth,ever. Didn't use enough lube. My dad's dies, and I was sure not going to ask him how to get out of this mess. Wasn't told I couldn't use em, just didn't bother to ask first. learned something from Grand dad, if you want to center something in a hole make sure it is the same diameter. So..... I wrapped some cloth tape around a sheet rock screw so that a few threads were exposed but only the tape would touch the inside of the die. Screwed it into the bottom of the bullet till it just about touched the nose and then used the ram on the press to pull the whole thing out... Then disposed of the evidence.