Lead semiwadcutter dies

[Willbird]

Interested in dies that form a lead non jacketed bullet in one "hit". In .224 specifically, and for use in a "normal" reloading press should be possible in .224 ??

Bill

[bullet maker 57]

Check with either of the Corbins, BT Sniper, H-G Firearms.There are other Vendor Sponsors you can check with also.

[Willbird]

I looked at the Corbin stuff, $199 and looks not to be reloading press friendly ??

Bill

[Zymurgy50]

Corbin can make you a set of .224 dies for reloading presses, but the pressures you might be limited to with hard lead my cause issues.

Contact Corbin to ask.

[DukeInFlorida]

There are tools out there which could swage something like the SWC nose that you mentioned, and are reloading press friendly. There's a couple of issues with swaging rifle bullets:
1) Lead bullets require some lubrication when going down the barrel, or else "leading" will cause your accuracy to go out the window. Swaging doesn't provide any "lube grooves" for applying bullet lube. Some guys who use swaged lead bullets roll their bullets under a file, to get some indentations in the lead, and use the dip type lube to coat the bullets. The danger with that system is that you can affect the working diameter of the bullets.
2) Rifle bullets require harder lead than for pistol bullets (see Glen Fryxxels book on the subject (http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_Contents.htm)). Harder lead isn't kind on swaging tools, or on swaging presses.

You might be just as well off buying a casting type mold, and casting bullets to your hearts content, able to adjust hardness on the fly, use a proper lube, and get the exact sizing that you need for your gun. Casting moves right along, piling up thousands of bullets in no time at all.


Corbin can make you a set of .224 dies for reloading presses, but the pressures you might be limited to with hard lead my cause issues.

Contact Corbin to ask.

[Willbird]

There are tools out there which could swage something like the SWC nose that you mentioned, and are reloading press friendly. There's a couple of issues with swaging rifle bullets:
1) Lead bullets require some lubrication when going down the barrel, or else "leading" will cause your accuracy to go out the window. Swaging doesn't provide any "lube grooves" for applying bullet lube. Some guys who use swaged lead bullets roll their bullets under a file, to get some indentations in the lead, and use the dip type lube to coat the bullets. The danger with that system is that you can affect the working diameter of the bullets.
2) Rifle bullets require harder lead than for pistol bullets (see Glen Fryxxels book on the subject (http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell_Book_Contents.htm)). Harder lead isn't kind on swaging tools, or on swaging presses.

You might be just as well off buying a casting type mold, and casting bullets to your hearts content, able to adjust hardness on the fly, use a proper lube, and get the exact sizing that you need for your gun. Casting moves right along, piling up thousands of bullets in no time at all.

The intended use is actually for airguns, some minimal lube is applied with a variety of methods. The system could potentially be a very accurate one, so cast bullets may not be nearly good enough.

The Eley range record set from a machine rest with 22lr was around 13mm at 50 meters for 40 shots....an accurate air rifle should be able to beat that, but not with cast bullets probably :-).

People are already using swaged bullets that look like they were intended to be used as 22lr bullets.

The velocity will probably end up up a lot like 22lr target velocities, right on the upper edge of subsonic.


Bill

[Willbird]

http://s378.photobucket.com/user/rsterne/media/224%20Long%20Range%20PCP/224cal41_5gr.jpg.html

here is the "rws" bullet some folks use, the heel is an artifact of their lineage as 22lr projectiles, and IMHO may NOT be desired in best form.

Bill

[Willbird]

http://web.archive.org/web/20010615225251/http://ns.connext.net/~pellets/mywebsite004.htm\

Here is an example, this guy no longer makes and sells those bullets.

[Zymurgy50]

It could be done with a 2 die set, a core bleed die with bleed holes sized for a harder alloy, and a core seat die with a swc nose punch and either a flat base punch or a hollow base punch.
However, that would leave you with a smooth side projectile, getting whatever lube you would use at 1,000fps +/- would be another problem,

[williamwaco]

Cast your bullets from whatever metal you prefer in the weight you want.
The point style doesn't matter,
Run them through your lubricator and fill the lube rings with lube.

Then:

Swage them to whatever point style you want.
The lube ringw will still be there ans will be lubricated after the swaging.

I have used this method with alloys up to about 11-12 BNH with a single stage reloading press.

Works well for me.

[Willbird]

It could be done with a 2 die set, a core bleed die with bleed holes sized for a harder alloy, and a core seat die with a swc nose punch and either a flat base punch or a hollow base punch.
However, that would leave you with a smooth side projectile, getting whatever lube you would use at 1,000fps +/- would be another problem,alberts bullets seemed to have the lubricant issue worked out :-). Swaging a lube sized bullet could be an option.

[deltaenterprizes]

Older style swage dies like the Herters 9 ton set up would be easy to make since it uses a seperate punch to form the nose and an ejector punch.
The die basically a cylinder.

Now I have to go buy a 22 cal air rifle!

[Forrest r]

ch should be able to help you or there's a guy on e-bay that sells swaging dies. Tell him what you need/looking for. He would be able to make you a .224die & several different nose forming dies.

A soft alloy would be best for a airgun & lubing the bullets is the easiest part. I've used this lube on my airgun pellets for years.

83078

That lube dries to a hard film & works excellent on airgun pellets.

[Willbird]

ch should be able to help you or there's a guy on e-bay that sells swaging dies. Tell him what you need/looking for. He would be able to make you a .224die & several different nose forming dies.

A soft alloy would be best for a airgun & lubing the bullets is the easiest part. I've used this lube on my airgun pellets for years.

83078

That lube dries to a hard film & works excellent on airgun pellets.that is pretty wild on the lube, I have a bottle of that in the garage left over from my road bike days.

[Forrest r]

Ya, it's also the cat's meow on bolts, firing pins, trigger groups & semi-auto actions. It just never gums up or collects dust but solvents like hoppe's will easily remove it.

[deltaenterprizes]

Thanks for the info!

[DukeInFlorida]

I cast some 147 grain 9mm bullets, and then lube/size them. I then run them into a .358" sized die set on a Swage-O-Matic press. As williamwaco suggests, the lube ring with lube is undisturbed, but the bullet reforms from a cone nose to a semi wad cutter design, and gets bumped out to .358 size. That's my 38 special plinking bullet, and I make bazillions of them. The Swage-O-Matic tooling has a lead bleed off hole to control the weight of the bullets.

I would bet that a similar process for the smaller airgun bullets would work perfectly. You'd get the best of both worlds, casting and swaging to finish them. Looking at the pictures you provided, I am all the more convinced that the guy who made those used a similar system.

The Swage-O-Matic presses were originally made by C-H, and I understand that they will still provide replacement parts and dies as needed. You can find Swage-O-Matic presses on eBay from time to time, and I have even seen some for sale here in the Selling and Swapping area. Anyone with some machining skills could make a set of tools easily.
The instruction manual for the Swage-O-Matic press is here: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.castpics.net%2Fsubsite%2FManu als%2FSwage-O-Matic.pdf&ei=a9RKUvSPCMH54APw1IDYBg&usg=AFQjCNGMOkYqjTee-ladZQ6hVZFRAzm6Dg&sig2=3CR2fsPuEMKw01ii87XNtA&bvm=bv.53371865,d.dmg&cad=rja

I think I recall seeing some group buys for cast airgun bullet molds. It's not one of my shooting hobbies, but it might be a direction to look into.

[Willbird]

I cast some 147 grain 9mm bullets, and then lube/size them. I then run them into a .358" sized die set on a Swage-O-Matic press. As williamwaco suggests, the lube ring with lube is undisturbed, but the bullet reforms from a cone nose to a semi wad cutter design, and gets bumped out to .358 size. That's my 38 special plinking bullet, and I make bazillions of them. The Swage-O-Matic tooling has a lead bleed off hole to control the weight of the bullets.

I would bet that a similar process for the smaller airgun bullets would work perfectly. You'd get the best of both worlds, casting and swaging to finish them. Looking at the pictures you provided, I am all the more convinced that the guy who made those used a similar system.

The Swage-O-Matic presses were originally made by C-H, and I understand that they will still provide replacement parts and dies as needed. You can find Swage-O-Matic presses on eBay from time to time, and I have even seen some for sale here in the Selling and Swapping area. Anyone with some machining skills could make a set of tools easily.
The instruction manual for the Swage-O-Matic press is here: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.castpics.net%2Fsubsite%2FManu als%2FSwage-O-Matic.pdf&ei=a9RKUvSPCMH54APw1IDYBg&usg=AFQjCNGMOkYqjTee-ladZQ6hVZFRAzm6Dg&sig2=3CR2fsPuEMKw01ii87XNtA&bvm=bv.53371865,d.dmg&cad=rja

I think I recall seeing some group buys for cast airgun bullet molds. It's not one of my shooting hobbies, but it might be a direction to look into.

I am thinking more along the lines of putting together an airgun to shoot bullets (as opposed to pellets). I know lots of folks do some minor alterations to the big Lee press to use it for swaging, should work for this type of thing I would think.

Bill

[R.M.]

......The Eley range record set from a machine rest with 22lr was around 13mm at 50 meters for 40 shots....an accurate air rifle should be able to beat that, but not with cast bullets probably......
Bill

This is a deceiving quote. Look at how it was measured.

"The range record for a 40 shot group at 50m is, I believe, Neil Stirton's Bleiker @ 13.5mm. The best 10 shot group is 8.9mm from a Feinwerkbau. These are both outside edge to outside edge."

[Willbird]

This is a deceiving quote. Look at how it was measured.

"The range record for a 40 shot group at 50m is, I believe, Neil Stirton's Bleiker @ 13.5mm. The best 10 shot group is 8.9mm from a Feinwerkbau. These are both outside edge to outside edge."

I had no intent to deceive. and there are more than 1 Eley range, the one where I looked at their webpage listed that group that I posted.


Range Records:
November 2008
Best 40 x shot consolidated group = 13,90mm by Rajmond Debevec Olympic shooter from Slovenia
Rifle: Feinwerkbau 2700
Batch Selected: 1008-04235
Best 40 x shot consolidated score = 426,1 by Rajmond Debevec Olympic shooter from Slovenia
Rifle: Feinwerkbau 2700
Batch Selected: 1008-04235

Nowhere is "outside to outside" mentioned, Never heard of a group being measured that way except the old "string measure" used for scheutzen matches.

I did google up some info on those test ranges, never really gave "outside to outside" a thought, surely did not mean to deceive anybody. So if we take 5.6mm away, I still stand by my statement that 22's in general are not terribly accurate machines, even at their best. Still 8.3mm center to center, .656" at 100 yards roughly more or less??

[R.M.]

I had no intention of accusing you of deceiving anybody. I just felt that a group that size seemed awfully large, so I did some Googling, and found some forum that had that quote.

[Willbird]

I had no intention of accusing you of deceiving anybody. I just felt that a group that size seemed awfully large, so I did some Googling, and found some forum that had that quote. We're cool then :-).

I did not dig deep enough maybe, the other group if it is actually truth is pretty decent....but it is not listed on the eley test range webpage, lapua does testing too though.

Bill

[R.M.]

:drinks: