Swaging and swaging.

[Buckshot]

............I'm pretty sure I've posted all these photo's before, but never all together or in a forum unique to swaging :-)

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This is the very first swage die setup I'd ever made. At the time I had a very cheap mill/lathe combo machine from Horror Fright. It wasn't even as good as the least expensive Smitty. It didn't have power feed nor was it capable of making threads. Very basic, but miles better then no lathe at all!

I'm sure it was all made out of low carbon steel like 1018/1020. It wouldn't heat harden, but since the parts are so large it turned out that it isn't necessary. Of the boolits shown, the 1st & 2nd are parent and result. The 3rd is the result of swaging #4 which is the Lee Target Minie'. On the extreme left is the nose forming stem. The body sits down over it.

The parent cast boolit or lead slug is dropped into the die body from the top. The the base forming plunger is placed into the top of the body. I used this in a bench type hydraulic press. It had a 4 ton bottle which proved too much of a good thing. If brought up solid it would extrude a bit of lead past the base punch. I changed to a 2 ton bottle and when brought up solid it would produce a perfect Minie'.

You then removed the bottom nose punch, placed the body and base punch over a board with a hole in it and pushed the Minie' out. Slow and tedious, but it worked and produced a fine Minie'.

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Another swage die I produced was this one for a friend. He'd read someplace about a guy who'd made jacketed slugs for a 35 Whelen using 30M1 carbine brass for the jacket. This was actually a 2 die set but I only got photo's of this die. He was moving to Prescott, AZ shortly so the 2nd die was a hurry up and get it done thing. The pictured die is a percussion type as he didn't have a hydraulic press.

For this die, you poured lead into a scrubbed out carbine case. It then lubed, it went into the bottom of the body and then sets on the base, which is the left item in both photo's. The ram is placed into the top and driven down with a hammer. What this die does is to upset the lead into the case, and expanding it. The rim of the carbine case is like .356" and the body just ahead of it is .354". The die body is bored to .357".

In the course of doing this you force the lead down into the case about .125". All the next die did was to form an ogive on the end of the case to make a nose. While doing this a portion of the lead in the upper end of the case was forced upward inside the nose so there was a small void under the HP of the nose. My buddy said it worked well. He experimented by placing a steel BB into the nose before upsetting the core, and when the nose was formed the BB was right there at the nose in the HP.

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This is a swage die I made to use in a RCBS RC press. The body is 1" W-1 high carbon steel but is un-hardened. Just below the body is the depth adjustment rod with the ejector spindle going through it with a nose forming punch on it. Imediatly to it's left is another nose punch. At the bottom is the ram mounted base punch. Obviously in this case to form a hollow base. By swapping out the SWC nose punch with the WC punch, you can simply turn the boolit around and have a mongo HP.

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These are a sample of some of the boolits altered via the above swage die. To eject the boolit you tap the double nut on top of the ejector pin with a rawhide or plastic hammer. As the depth adjustment rod is threaded, you can adjust it up or down in the die body. Also by adjusting the die body up and down in the press you can bring it to the point where you can get max leverage on the boolit in the die via the presses lever.

[Buckshot]

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I've posted photo's of this press before. This is the Walnut Hill press as offered by Richard Corbin of RCE enterprises. The way it works is that the ejector rod and body are dropped into the ram. There is a shoulder it stops against. The top of the ram is threaded (7/8-14) and the die body threads into it, and down over the ejector rod. In the top crossarm of the press is threaded the retainer, which kind of looks like a die, and the base plubger fits in it. These are stationary and are not shown in these photos.

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In this photo the core forming die is being used. The small lead rods have been extruded from the die as the core is compressed. This photo was taken during my first experimental use of the press. WAY too much lead is being extruded here. All you should get is about 3/8" outside the die if that much. What the core forming die does is to bring all the cores to the same weight. We're dealing with some pretty tremendous pressures (the lube is designed to not diesel) so the press will yeild a bit.

When you press the lever down lead rapidly extrudes form the die. With the handle all the way down and you look closely you will see the lead slowly oozing out of the bleed hole slower and slower until it stops. This is the press equalizing. Once the lead stops you raise the lever and eject the core which is simply a very smooth shiny lead cylinder. If done this way, your cores will all weigh within 1/10th grain of each other. If you don't allow the press to equalize your weight spread will run about 3/10th grain.

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This is just a photo of odds and ends. Up at the top are some core mould adjusting pins I parted off of some 3/8" rod. You place one of the rods in the ist cavity of the core mould and then run the adjustment stem up to it. The sprueplate is closed so the core adjusting pin butts up against it. Then repeat for each cavity. This way your cores start out fairly uniform.

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This is the 5 cavity core mould. It produces 5, .442" diameter flat ended lead cylinders. These go into a core forming die which extrudes excess lead and puts a cup base on'em. These are visible and labeled in the photo above these 2.

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This is the basic die setup for the press. On the left (left photo) is the ejector pin & body. As mentioned this is dropped down inside the ram and they sit on a shoulder inside the ram. The die body is then set over the ejector pin and screwed down to the crossarm of the press. The die body and ejector move up and down. The piece on the right is the base punch, which is stationary in the top of thepress. The die moves up over it.

In the right photo is the die body sitting atop the ejector assembly. You can see the top of the ejector pin there in the mouth of the die. In the photo showing lead extrusions you can see stuck through the ram a round rod, and a flat steel rectangle piece of steel under it. In the body of the ejector (above) there is a hole, and the rod goes through this and a spring sits on it captured between the rod and the underside of the platen holding the die body. This spring forces the ejector body to remain seated against shoulder in the ram.

The steel bar you see below the rod (in the extruding photo) provides a stop for the ejector pin body on the ram's downward movement. This forces it to push the boolit up out of the die as the ram is lowered over the ejector body.

By placing shims under the ejector pin body you can make the ejector pin ride higher inside the die cavity. Doing this will give you a HP in the nose of the boolit. The dies shown in the phto were ones I made to produce a larger OD Minie' boolit for use in the 577 Snider cartridge. These need to be of .593 to about .600" OD vs the as cast diameter of .575" to .580" most commonly encountered for 58 cal muzzle loaders.


.................Buckshot

[Buckshot]

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On the right is a 580gr Pritchit minie' cast from a Raphine mould, and it's HB. You really can't see the OD change but on the left is the swaged result. In addition to being larger in OD, the skirt has been made thicker with an even heavier step inside, plus a HP has been swaged into it.

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On the left is a Lee 478gr Target Minie' going into the die, and on the right is a fresh new 478gr heavy skirted Pritchit style Minie' coming out. I don't have a core mould or a core forming die for these so I just use other cast Minie's as the core. Since they can vary in weight, you have to be sensitive to the pressure applied to the lever when forming.

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Another dieset I made was to bump up regular .358" cast WC's to .363" and form a HB in them for use in a couple pistols I have in 38 S&W cartridge. On the left a regular cast WC goes in and out comes a fatter one with a HB swaged into it. The neat part is that anything you can fit into the die for swaging will come out at .363" with a HB in it.

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A) Is a regular WC, swaged. B) Is the Lee 358-158RF, and C) is the Lyman 200 gr 358430 RN swaged into a HBWC :-).

It's a great lot of fun. While Richard Corbin's dies are masterpieces, mine gets the job done. His dies are 1" OD and made from some noble heat treated steel. Since I haven't built a heat treat furnace yet :-), I use Russian engineering via larger OD die bodies like 1-1/4 or 1-5/16" unhardened steel. Since the base plungers are smaller in cross section I use W-1 or O-1 high carbon steel, and they DO get hardened. So far I'm well please with thier ability to handle the job.

................Buckshot

[RANGER RICK]

Buckshot

Thanks for the pictures . Show us more .
I have ordered the same press , dies and all the goodies that go with it and I have been waiting for it to arrive from Richard .
I ordered the .500 dies to make jacketed rounds and have about 1000 pounds of straight lead to make cores .
Will be glad to start soon . Everything has been bought and paid for since May so I hope it arrives very soon.

RR

[Buckshot]

...............I too had to wait awile for the stuff to come. Richard had some problems with the foundry and his powder coater. Plus he had to wait on some materials. He may also hold off a bit to accumilate a few orders before making a run, due to seting up jigs and fixtures. I can sympathize :-) However it's worth the wait as it's all 1st cabin.

.............Buckshot

[dromia]

I'm just discussing an order with him (Walnut Hill press dies and stuff) and he said he would be ready to ship end of February 2008, so at present it looks like a three month lead in. This does include the Hogmanay holiday so that could hold things up a bit as well.