Info on making reamers and dies

[customcutter]

Here is some information I've found over the past few weeks on making reamers and from them possibly dies. If your like me you might have the equipment but maybe not the skills or funds. I'm trying to learn how to use some of the equipment that I've accumulated over the past few years, and can't justify spending the funds. But, I have some spare time, others may not.

How to make a D-reamer. http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/downloads/files/-Reamers.pdf

How KTN (sticky in this forum) made his starting in post #145
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?75201-Home-made-dies/page8

How another author makes a 5 flute reamer http://personal.geeksnet.com/soderstrom/ReamerMaking/HowImakechamberreamers.htm

This author show how to make a 6 flute reamer.
http://firearmsdesigner.com/?p=353

Each author shows how they indexed their reamers. KTN used a square block of material, and turned it 90* each time. The next author used a piece of tape and divided it by 5. The next author used a 6 sided holder (I think I can substitute a bolt head).

I tried making one like KTN's last week, and forgot to temper it back. It shattered like glass when I tried hand feeding it on my lathe. Several hours of work gone in a second.

I think some of these methods could be used to make reamers to form rifle sizing dies, which in turn can be used to form pistol projectiles. I know some of the guys are using Lee rifle dies to do this.

All these methods deal with straight walls, straight tapers or angles etc. I'm still trying to figure out if it can be done on an ogive.

Hope this helps someone.
CC

[Cane_man]

great info CC, i look forward to learning how it turns out for you... if you get a chance post some pics as this step is on my to do list...

[customcutter]

FYI. The first 4 flute reamer I made I "eye balled" it as I tried to turn it 90*, after making each flute. I just tried making a square holder (like KTN used) to hold the reamer as I turned it 90*. I was looking at it and trying to figure out how to drill and tap a hole to put an allen head in. It appeared that the reamers weren't quite straight so I put the holder on the surface plate and rotated through each surface. Sure enough it was off by as much as .040 from side to side. I tried making the holder from some .75 key stock that I had, and between cutting it and trying to grind off some of the angled cut, it appeared to have work hardened. Needless to say the drill bit wandered off when I tried to drill it for inserting the reamer. Next time I'll try some aluminum. I'll try to get some pics posted, if I can figure out how.

CC

[bearcove]

The book I have shows the flutes being spaced UNevenly. Supposed to reduce the chatter. Evenly spaced may look better but..

[Cane_man]

cc, if you have trouble posting pics you can send them to me via email and i would be glad to post them here...

[customcutter]

The book I have shows the flutes being spaced UNevenly. Supposed to reduce the chatter. Evenly spaced may look better but..

Sounds feasable. Most of all believable. If anyone ask, I'll just tell them I did it do reduce chatter.

CC

[Cane_man]

opsec

[customcutter]

7167271671Here's some pics. The first two are a reamer that I got a little aggressive with the file. But decided I will finish it any way. It came in at .218. You can see in the first pic I have the height gage at the tip. Rotated 180* and it slid well up under the same setting on the gage.

[customcutter]

Don't ask me how but I took 4 pics they ranged in size from roughly 60X90 to 1200X2400. Posted these two pics in the test area as thumbnails and they came out the same size. Technology and I don't get along sometimes. I try to do better in the future.

CC

[Cane_man]

just use photobucket.com, free and ez to open an account and upload pics, then just post the url here in your post and copy paste the pic url and enclose it in html tags like this (img)http://your-photo-url.com(/img) but use brackets [ ] instead of parentheses ( )

i assume these are 6s radius for the ogive... how are you achieving this profile? eyeballing it, or are you using another means

[customcutter]

Cane,

Just eyeballing it for now. Grabbed a 55gr .224 out of the box and tried to copy it.

[xd4584]

I read in the book Advanced Gunsmithing that reamer flutes should be an UNEVEN distance apart to prevent chatter

[wonderwolf]

I've been making D reamers occasionally for the last 2 years now for bullet swage dies. Only in the last 6 months have I been doing fluted reamers using a spindex, it works well you just have to have your reamer geometry down pat. I had to spend a couple of nights with pen and paper to figure out the geometry, how far in to make each cut etc. The reamers I've made so far have been 5 flute reamers. Have not had supper good results but I'm still learning. The OP has more info in it than I've seen in one place on making fluted reamers.

[customcutter]

It must be true that unevenly spaced flutes help reduce the chatter. Either that, or Bearcove and xd4584 have the same book.

Wonderwolf,

What size reamers have you made? rifle or pistol?

I've spend a lot of hours trying to research this before jumping in. Probably if I had $0.25/hr, I could have bought a dedicated swaging press and a set of dies for .224 from BTSniper. Like they all said it's a labor of love, unless you can do it economically enough to go into business as a few have. Then it's probably still a labor of love. Just thought I would try to help others along the journey, just like this site has done for me.

CC

[wonderwolf]

I've made reamers for .375 swage dies and now working on my first custom die for somebody wanting to swage some special wad cutters in .38, I've spaced my flutes unevenly as well but don't run my reamers hard enough I think to get chatter. I cut very slowly as I'm not doing production runs of anything. I think time spent in the shop trying things causes me to learn 4x faster than trying to research and do things on paper. I have only used O-1 so far, may try W-1 in the future it might be easier to use. The only thing is being able to design the point form reamers close to what you want. For this I think a over head projector made into a pseudo comparitor kind of works if you want to make several reamers and a lapping reamer, food for thought...I've avoided writing about this on my blog because I'm still not sure what I'm doing...maybe this summer I will heh....

[bearcove]

Uneven flutes are how i know to make them on manual equipment. The tools the reamer makers use are so accurate that it probably doesn't matter.

[customcutter]

Tried heat treating and tempering the D-reamers this AM. I had previously made a 4 flute reamer and hardened it, but forgot to temper it back. I tried hand turning the headstock as I fed the reamer in with the tailstock, and it shattered like glass. I thought that I had gotten all of the bits out of the die but apparently I didn't. Looks like I'm going to have to toss this die attempt and start over. I'm using 4140PH for the dies, but I don't think it should be a problem. It should be +/- 35RC, and the W-1 should have been about 50-55RC if the thermostat on the toaster oven was right. I know a file cut the D-reamers this AM after tempering, no problem. But it would be 60-65+RC.

Here's pics of the broken 4 flute, and what the embedded bits did to the next D-reamer. Sorry for the extra pics, was trying to load it to gallery not in this post.

[teddyblu]

The pic is a 4 flute reamer. they have problems not associated to a D reamer.
The diamater is .220 the flute is cut to a depth of .080 ..
This depth leaves some stength to the flute but the point of ojive is still to large to cut into a .062 ejection pin hole , so the point still has to be cut by hand file to form a cutting flute and cut into ejection hole.
The point could be cut by changing the angle of mill head but recalabrating the mill head is not worth the little effort required to swiss file the flute.
The reamer is not yet hardened as it just came from the mill.74897

[customcutter]

Teddyblu,

What materials are you using for reamers and dies? What advantages, disadvantages do you see for the D-reamers and 4 flute reamers?

CC

[Twmaster]

Are any of the commercial reamer makers producing bullet shaped reamers?

[customcutter]

Are any of the commercial reamer makers producing bullet shaped reamers?

Not that I am aware of. I know I read a thread where someone said they talked to the owner of PTG, and he said he would not make them.

CC