How hard ?

[Johnch]

I have acess to a swag set up , with 30 , 44 and 45 cal die's
That I might be able to pick up very reasonable

I was wondering how hard of a aloy can be swaged without straing the press ( Corbin ?? I think )

John

[MightyThor]

My info from reading Corbin's books is that it is not really the press you need to worry about as far as hardness of lead. The press ram goes up and down and exerts force in a single direction, along the length of the ram which is the strongest part of the ram. The force that the lead exerts on the die is an expansion kind of force that pushes in many different directions and pushes out on the thin walls of the die as well as laterally along the length of the die. Hard lead requires more pressure to form and that force may exceed the strength of some thin walled dies. Typically, for any die type, the bigger the hole (caliber of bullet), the thiner the die walls will be and thus may be subject to damage from high pressure. Corbin's smaller presses use smaller diameter die bodies than the larger presses.

There are of course some presses that will have weaker pivot points and the force at those points is a shear force across the pivot and those points can be broken in any press. Since you specifically mention a Corbin Press I am not aware of any of the Corbin presses where the press itself will not handle hard lead.