44Blam
04-23-2020, 11:29 PM
NOTE: Prior to trying this, read Pat Marlin's Learning Pages... It's got the right part # for the aluminum you need (not hardened) and a lot of good information.
Well, I ran out of boolits for my 357 sig barrel so I did a big cast session where I cast about 600 125 grain GC boolits.
The next day, I head down to my garage and start putting gas checks on and powder coating them when I realized: I do not have enough gas checks... BUT I do have this 35 caliber gas check maker and a whole spool of aluminum.
Here is the spool:
260955
So the way to make this is to take your aluminum and cut it into strips that you can pass through the disc maker. This was fairly tricky as I was unsure of how wide a strip I needed to make. So, by trial and error I came up with 13.5 mm for my 35 cal die. I had a hard time measuring and getting it to be 13.5mm and perfectly straight. A couple would be 13mm on one end (ok) and 14mm on the other (NOT ok). To solve this problem, I made a little jig:
260956
What I do is take a sharpie and mark both ends and in the middle and use that as a guide for the paper cutter. Works GREAT! :)
After I figured out how to make aluminum strips it was time to start making discs. I start making discs and I find that occasionally I get little burs and stuff so I just kept a pair of tin-snips around and I just nipped them off. The thing I found for getting good checks with no burrs was to try to align the strip right in the middle and when cutting the disc - do it quickly. The other thing I found was that it just EJECTS them and they go flying. What I did to control this was I put my hand over the top and then I could just pick up the disc after cutting it. This was A LOT of work. There's probably a way to make it less work...will have to play with it.
Making a pile of discs:
260957
And my actual pile of discs after I got kind of tired of making them:
260958
After I stopped making discs, it was time to reconfigure the die set to turn those discs into gas checks. This turned out to be a lot easier and the only problem I had was I had a couple of discs that didn't seat in properly and made a lop-sided gas check. Those went in the trash...
Here is the birth of a gas check:
260959
And then my final pile of gas checks with one of my 125 grain boolits with a Hornady gas check and one with my hand made gas check:
260960
I am now going to have to do some testing to see if they shoot well, but I don't doubt that it will work just fine.
All and all, it was a pretty cool experience. It seems like I'll probably just make this a task that I do for a couple days on a weekend when I need checks and just make a few thousand.
Well, I ran out of boolits for my 357 sig barrel so I did a big cast session where I cast about 600 125 grain GC boolits.
The next day, I head down to my garage and start putting gas checks on and powder coating them when I realized: I do not have enough gas checks... BUT I do have this 35 caliber gas check maker and a whole spool of aluminum.
Here is the spool:
260955
So the way to make this is to take your aluminum and cut it into strips that you can pass through the disc maker. This was fairly tricky as I was unsure of how wide a strip I needed to make. So, by trial and error I came up with 13.5 mm for my 35 cal die. I had a hard time measuring and getting it to be 13.5mm and perfectly straight. A couple would be 13mm on one end (ok) and 14mm on the other (NOT ok). To solve this problem, I made a little jig:
260956
What I do is take a sharpie and mark both ends and in the middle and use that as a guide for the paper cutter. Works GREAT! :)
After I figured out how to make aluminum strips it was time to start making discs. I start making discs and I find that occasionally I get little burs and stuff so I just kept a pair of tin-snips around and I just nipped them off. The thing I found for getting good checks with no burrs was to try to align the strip right in the middle and when cutting the disc - do it quickly. The other thing I found was that it just EJECTS them and they go flying. What I did to control this was I put my hand over the top and then I could just pick up the disc after cutting it. This was A LOT of work. There's probably a way to make it less work...will have to play with it.
Making a pile of discs:
260957
And my actual pile of discs after I got kind of tired of making them:
260958
After I stopped making discs, it was time to reconfigure the die set to turn those discs into gas checks. This turned out to be a lot easier and the only problem I had was I had a couple of discs that didn't seat in properly and made a lop-sided gas check. Those went in the trash...
Here is the birth of a gas check:
260959
And then my final pile of gas checks with one of my 125 grain boolits with a Hornady gas check and one with my hand made gas check:
260960
I am now going to have to do some testing to see if they shoot well, but I don't doubt that it will work just fine.
All and all, it was a pretty cool experience. It seems like I'll probably just make this a task that I do for a couple days on a weekend when I need checks and just make a few thousand.