core mold and swaging

[muzzleblastm38]

i made a core mold,ok single core,but after do i realy need to swage it

[Pipefitter]

It depends on the degree of uniformity you are after. If you are looking for benchrest accuracy at 1,000 yards with commercial J4 jackets, then you probably would want to swage the cores. If you are making 45's from 40's and punching holes in tin cans or 'coons in the trash barrel a grain or two difference wont matter much.

[runfiverun]

I too have a single cavity core mold and no core swage die.
I weight sort my cores, fortunately the core mold is somewhat adjustable and so I set it to pour about 50grs.
this gives me a good percentage of 50gr cores and some on either side, I use the 49.9 to 50.1gr cores with my J-4 jackets then weight sort after swaging to give me exact weight bullets.
the jackets vary about .1gr too, so I weight sort them out and use the lighter jackets with the heavier cores, etc.
so I get a good pile of 65gr bullets and some on the .1 light side that shoot just as well and my weight variations are within a tolerable amount to me.

it would be a lot easier to have more cores to deal with, then I wouldn't toss so many outside my weight window back, as I could just expand the window to include more weight variation groups [more batches of bullets]

[fredj338]

For best accuracy, I say yes. Now I am not an expert, only about 1000 224/22lr done, but core uniformity seems pretty important.

[tiger762]

My view is that having a uniform core is not only for downrange accuracy but so that you don't have to readjust the core seat and point form dies. If you have a core that is a few grains heavier, then seating it will possibly require backing off the seating die. Remember, when the die is set, you are establishing a certain *volume* that the seated core will occupy. The point form assumes that there is a known quantity of lead because it sets the shape of that consistent volume of lead.

So if you are using fired brass for jackets and/or are not swaging to a constant weight, expect that each throw of the press handle will feel different. You may find yourself moving in / moving out the core seat and point form dies because lead is NOT compressible....