Good Swaging Article in June Handloader

[Bent Ramrod]

Someone named Mike Thomas acquired some of the tools once owned by the late Kent Bellah, who did a lot of writing on bullet swaging in the gun magazines in the '60's. He used the tooling, tested the bullets produced thereby and wrote the endeavor up quite nicely in Handloader #253.

His article covers making pistol bullets with the Swag-O-Matic press and dies, and also the making and use of the Lakeville Arms Jugular and Prot-X-Bore bullets designed by the late Jim Harvey. Both the swaging and casting of the Prot-X-Bore bullets are covered. This is the kind of article I used to subscribe to Rifle and Handloader to get. They're somewhat fewer and further between anymore, but when they do happen they are still as good as ever.

[Southern Son]

I'm still waiting on the last Handloader, when it didn't get here and I saw it on the news stand shelf, I sent an e-mail asking what is going on. They said that all the overseas subscriptions got sent out late, but they would send me another one becuase it looks like mine got lost. I subscribed for a year for Rifle and Handloader because they don't always get into the newsagency over here, but out of the three issues (1 rifle, 2 Handloader) I only have 1 magazine. It is getting frustrating. I hope I don't have to send an e-mail to get every edition of each magazine.

[Dale53]

Southern Son;
I subscribe to Rifle, Handloader, and Hunter online. I get immediate delivery and at MUCH less cost. You might want to try that. Side benefit is I have no magazines piling up around the place.

Dale

[kir_kenix]

I read and enjoyed the article. My great grandfather and grandfather did a lot of reloading in the '50-60's, and I periodically come across some of their stuff. A year or 2 ago my Grandfather gave me about a thousand .38 cast bullets with zinc washers at the base, and a few half jacketed .44's. The .38's kind of 'welded' themselves to the washer, but otherwise seemed fine. Never read much about them until this last months handloader tho.

It's kind of neat to read about the good ole days. One of these days I'll get the half jacketed .44's out and load some of them up. Not really sure if the zinc washer ever served a real purpose, but you can't find them anymore so they must not have been overly successful.

[jcunclejoe]

Actually Dave Corbin still sells the zinc basedisks and the dies to install/swage bullets with them. Maybe not a huge success but still available.
Joe

[EMC45]

They actually had a bunch of really good articles in the past issue of Handloader.

[bullet maker]

I can relate to southern-son not getting all of his magazines, Heck I live here in the U.S.A., and I get my late or not at all. This June issue U-all talking bout. I ain`t got mine yet. I`m fixen to give them an e-mail also.
I enjoy there writings about the big bores, cause thats what I shoot. (444`s and 45-70`s), but like I use to see stuff about swaging, and that`s the main reason, I subscribed to the magazine, and all of a sudden they dont have much about the swaging side anymore.


bullet maker

[Bret4207]

Guys like Kent Bellah did a lot of neat stuff way back when. Too bad our modern guys, most of them anyways, can't get past the "NEW!!! IMPROVED!!!!" mindset.