Made a swage die for my paper patch experiments

[oldracer]

Well the molds I made for my paper patch experiments did not work out well. I made them a bottom pour mold with a "push out" fitting on the nose. The size was right on but the nose was not smooth and while they worked fine at 100 yards, anything over that they looked like shotgun pellets! So I thought a bit and thought, can I size or swage them down to 0.438 from the as cast 0.448 which is the grease groove size and works great out to at lease 300 yards. I then noticed....hey I have a Harbor Freight 10 ton bench press sitting in the corner that I used for pressing bearings, etc on my race car years ago and I figured it could force a telephone pole up a nat's ***!

So I took a chuck of 6061-T6 and drilled a series of steps every 1/2 inch starting at 0.450 at the top and ending at 0.438 at the bottom. I used a piece of drill rod as the pressing rod and tapered it slightly. So I ran a few of the less than perfect castings through it and it took a bit of force but they came out smooth and the right size....0.438! Soooooo, I did a dozen and they all are the same size and wrapped them for a range trip next week. Right now it is 107 in my back yard and I live on the ocean so I plan to wait a bit but seems like this might do it?

I did order a 0.438 mold from Old West Bullet Molds so I should get that next week so I'll have several things to try out! They had some good things said about them on here so we'll see. I realize this is not a "true" swage but more of a sizer so please don't holler about my naming of it.

[johnson1942]

what size paper do you use on a .438 bullet? i suggest trying a single wrap chase system with 20 pound computer paper. you can find out how to single wrap at ramshot.co, one their blog section. keep us informed on how it goes.

[oldracer]

If I remember correctly, the paper is 11# onion skin or a type of tracing paper. With two wraps it adds 10 thousands to the diameter of the bullet. The weirdness of this seems to be the built in choke to the ends of both my Pedersoli Gibbs and my 45 caliber Green Mountain barrels. Once the bullet gets about 6 inches in, you can hear it sort of slide down to the wad very slowly. I have the single wrap on my list of stuff to try but that will be a month or two away at the rate I am going?

If this method of sizing the bullets works okay then I can make these sizers any size I want. So far the 0.449 540gn Creedmoor seem to shoot the best at lease out to 300 yards.