Home Fabricated Lead core cutters????

[creekwalker]

I’ve been experimenting with the Herter’s 38/357 swaging die I purchased over the holidays and like it quite a bit. Other dies and equipment will soon be in the works. Now with respect to lead core wire cutters I’ve viewed the offerings of the Corbin and RCCE swaging companies but wondered how difficult is it to make one you’re self? :coffee:
How many of you have done this and how well did they turn out? Would anyone be willing to share plans or pictures of what you built? At this point the only home built core cutter I can recall seeing on a forum was two hinged metal flats with parallel holes drilled in the flats as the shear. Any recommendations or suggestion would be appreciated.:)

Creekwalker

[garandsrus]

Creekwalker,

I want to build one also... I have been thinking about what I would need to do but don't have everything finalized yet.

My thought so far is something like a paper cutter but with a hole slightly larger than the wire to cut. There would be a stop that the wire touches when it is the correct length. The "blade" would be a thin (1/4"?) piece of flat stock that has 1/2 a large countersink on the edge. The countersink would allow the blade to be sharpened/honed. I would suspect that the blade would also need to be hardened after being sharpened.

John

[454PB]

I made my own, and it does resemble a paper cutter. It's kind of crude, and I apologize for the poor picture quality, the light shining in the window cast a shadow that obscures some of the detail. However, it does an excellent job.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v16/eddard49/Homemadecorecutter.jpg

[toecutter]

454pb,

No worries about picture quality, that's spot on! Only suggestion I might make would be having a tube which holds the wire so it can't twist. Also, you could put a ring made out of drill rod which the wire will slip through, might guarantee a cleaner cut.

I'm still using scrap cores the punch press kicked out. I'm still trying to come up with a way of producing the PB wire from my casting furnace.

[garandsrus]

454PB,

Does the wire pass through both bars before cutting? I saw on Corbin's site that he uses a pair of dies to do the cutting. I think that they are just flat stock with an appropriately sized hole in it. It makes a lot of sense in that it would fully support both pieces of wire during the cut so that it doesn't deform much.

John

[creekwalker]

454PB,

I agree with toecutter, that's a great looking picture and a simple solution to the problem. I'm impressed with your solution to measuring the wire. Some of what you've done as well as toecutters suggestion to have a feed tube for the core wire were ideal's I've been considering, the thing I couldn't figure out though was how to measure the length of cut,, but you found that one.

Now I wonder if you drilled and tapped the feed hole for different sized orifices for the different sized wires, would that make an all in one tool. I sure hope so, because that's what I'm going to try!

Creekwalker

[454PB]

I have thought about adding a "guide tube" as suggested, but it works fine as is. The wire passes through a hole that is about .010" larger than the wire. I use a snap action to shear it off, to minimize the pinching cut action that happens if the lever is pulled down slowly. It will cut cores to within .2 grain accuracy.

The metal is all just mild steel angle iron and strap, not hardened at all. If you use this same design and are going to cut wire larger than .22 caliber, I'd suggest you make the whole rig a little larger for more leverage.

Once it's set, I can cut a core every second or so. I'm using 3 foot long sections of wire and simply straighten it all out on the bench so that it feeds through quickly.

[creekwalker]

Interesting comments 454PB, you make very good sense about up scaling the construction a bit and using the snapping action to cut the lead core wire. The mild steel material sound’s good to, I’d wondered about that one as your shearing the material more so than cutting it. I was looking at an image of a Corbin core wire cutter and it operates on the same principle as yours does, but is a bit more refined looking. I believe I’d rather build my own and use the money I saved to purchase other components.

Creekwalker

[garandsrus]

454PB,

Is your "cutter arm" sharpened at all? I was thinking of the 1/2 countersink as a way to easily sharpen the edge of the cutter. I don't know if it needs to be sharp though...

Thanks,
John

[454PB]

454PB,

Is your "cutter arm" sharpened at all? I was thinking of the 1/2 countersink as a way to easily sharpen the edge of the cutter. I don't know if it needs to be sharp though...

Thanks,
John

No, mine isn't sharp, just a very tight fit between the stationary and moving blade. I used a fine cut file and some emery cloth to smooth the faces for that. I also filed the cutting surface (the underside of the moving blade) flat and square. The hinge bolt wears a Nylok nut so it doesn't loosen in use. It's really more of a shear than a cutter. I'd guess I've cut well over a 1000 cores with it and have never had it apart since assembly for anything. I record the spacing distance for different weights. My swaged bullets run from 40 grains using .22 short casings to 60 grains using long rifle casings. With my die set, anything over 60 grains won't work using long rifles. I've thought about trying some .22 magnum brass but haven't done it yet.

However, one thing that could be changed would be to put more of a bevel on the cutting surface. As is, it's the same thickness as the strap, which leaves a small flat on the cut core. A bevel should reduce the size of the flat. It's so accurate and consistent, I hate to mess with it!

[toecutter]

So, I was looking at the picture again... Now, if you made it the other way (for a right handed person) you could push the wire in with the left, and work the cutter with the right. (don't know if you're a lefty PB) As far as sharpening. The press at work we use to make bullets from lead wire isn't sharp at all, nor is the wire tight fitting in the feed orifice. The only important dimension is the fit between the cutter, and the orifice the wire comes in from. The size of the orifice is usually .100" larger than the size of the actual wire used. The cutter (which has a flat face with a little U shape the wire feeds into, and is then trapped by a spring loaded finger) is pretty much 90deg to the rear face, so just two chunks of angle iron should do fine provided they are thick enough to not flex, also, if it's not tight fitting the lead will tend to gall and eventually may cause problems.

[454PB]

You caught me....yes, I'm a lefty.

[scrapcan]

Another item you might look at if you make one is to move pivot point so you cut on the back side of the pivot bolt. You don't need a lot of leverage to cut lead, but it will make things very easy.

another thought I had was to make multiple size holes in the cutter blades. Not sure which way you would want to arrange the holes from pivot. I am of the opinion that larger holes closer to the pivot to transfer greater force. I have not done any calculations but it just sounded right based on some rudimentary statics.

[garandsrus]

Manleyjt,

Great idea to move the cutter to the other side of the pivot to get some leverage! I thought about multiple holes and agree that the larger holes should be closest to the pivot.

I have 50lbs of lead wire on it's way here so I need to get a cutter made! I found a guy that sells the wire for $1.75/lb which I thought was a pretty good price.

John

[toecutter]

ManleyJT just gave me a possibly worse idea... make it dual action, so you cut on the way down, and then again on the way up. Like one of those crazy sushi-chefs on those ginsu-infomercials. All that needs to be done is allow the blade to swing below the feed orifice and contact the stop again before moving back up.

Damn, I hate thinking about machines, because then it makes me want to build them. I'm now thinking about how to make the wire auto-feed. Once you can do that, you just mount the end your hand normally goes on to to a big flywheel, and then have a rocker-pedal (like on an old sewing machine, or grinding wheel). Then again, once you actually implemented a design like this, you would reduce a spool of lead to a giant pile of cores before you knew what hit you (bad if you are doing something different than a single bullet).

[454PB]

These are all good ideas and thoughts, but you are going to spend 5% of your time cutting cores, and 95% of your time doing the forming. The most important thing is that whatever you build...it has to be able to cut accurate, uniform cores.

[Pavogrande]

Hope I am not repeating the obvious here -- Looked at my ancient Pacific cutter and it would be quite easy to duplicate in the home shop. Two pieces of 3/8 by 3/4 cold rolled stock. One is about 13" long (the cutter) the other about 7" long (the guide). Five holes drilled in each piece 22, 25, 30, 38 and !/4" for pivot hole. The short piece bolts to bench or vise. Wire is fed through both pieces to stop then handle sheers wire. Quite similar to an electricians small screw cutter. The cold rolled stock is square and drilling it will leave a good shearing surface and the wire captured in two hole will shear with minimal distortion.
Stop is a small piece of cold rolled attached to side of short piece and bent in a 90 with a machine screw and nut fo adjusting length of cut. Sounds a bit complicated but is quite simple.

[creekwalker]

Had to think about this one for a bit to get a good mental visual on the process. It make's a lot of sense, I'll try to get one together as soon as I get a powered hack saw, had enough of cutting metal w/o one, once I used a chop saw for wood working I was through.

creekwalker

[MightyThor]

I had been casting cores for most of my stuff and what little cutting I did with a home made job similar to the one pictured above. Recently I came into posession of a Corbin unit and it has some features that are worth considering on any home made unit.
First, the unit can be mounted so that you cut by moving the handle side to side. The cut core falls into any catch bucket you choose to use.
Second, the wire feeds in from the top, through a hole in the frame, through a matching hole in the cutter handle and rests against the stop. The hole in the handle (appears to be a hardened insert) does support the wire as it is being cut so that distortion of the lead at the sheer seems to be minimized. The Core end stays round cause it can't really change shape. I assume that the insert is hardened for wear and longevity purposes not because it has to be so to cut the lead. with this system any two pieces of flat metal will cut lead of whatever diameter hole you choose to drill.
http://byfiles.storage.live.com/y1pf4jO6cxTWa6xvYTChlaZhQrIeLLp4iqT4wVkjD21V4oYq6q eMv3qMtKkxD74xpHZGgJvmXc_O5c