hornady half jacket cups in 44

[green mountain boy]

does anyone use hornady 44 cup half jackets any more ? i see nothing on the swaging forum talking about them. or are they too old hat ?

[JRLesan]

Affirmative; I do...

[green mountain boy]

your message box is full

[uscra112]

Are those still around? I remember there was a fad for them ~40 years ago. (Yeah, I'm that old.) The results were universally less than stellar, and I thought they had disappeared.

[JRLesan]

Way more than 40 years ago; many major bullet manufacturers offered SWC's with partial jackets. Not so much anymore but nothing wrong with them...

[rbuck351]

I have some in 38 and 44 and an old swag-o-matic press to install them but I haven't used any as I find cast boolits to work great without the half jacket. I might try them some day.

[Sasquatch-1]

I have found that for 44 and 45 it is a lot, and I mean a lot, cheaper to use the 40 S&W brass cut down to the length you want. I just made some 45ACP half jacket SWC's using a new version of the old Swage-O-Matic dies that has the step on the bullet and they worked fine. I have used the Hornady copper jackets and for what I shoot I can't tell the difference.

My opinion, and everyone knows about opinions, is why pay thirty to forty dollars for 500 of something that you can get for free.