Is there a swaging 101 or FAQ?

[cwskirmisher]

I have been reloading my own, and casting my own for quite some time. Until recently (thanks castboolits.com) I thought swaging was for commercial casters. I have a rockchucker -
I learned again just recently what RCBS actually stood for... sooo... how do you do it? Special dies? where do you get lead wire?

Also, how do you form homemade jackets? I have lots of old brass I would like to experiment with...

Eager to learn,
Thanks

[Adam10mm]

www.corbins.com
www.ch4d.com

Do a bunch of browsing here on the swaging subforum. You will spend several hours looking at Corbin's site.

[kawalekm]

Hi Skirmisher
You have a couple of choices. You do not have to buy lead wire. You can also use a core mold, or even use cast bullets of a smaller caliber as your core. That way you can still use your casting equipment.

As for jackets, there are a couple of choices. First, you can buy commercial jackets, though they're almost as expensive as finished bullets. Several members including myself have projects making jackets out of fired cases. Just scroll through the previous posts to see what's going on.

You can also make jackets out of recycled copper tubing. You can buy dies to close the ends of sections of tubing to make jackets. There are even dies to draw your own jackets from rounds of copper punched out of sheets. You can find those dies at Corbin's website.

Finally, there are swaggers that can electroplate their own bullets with pure copper.

A lot is possible depending on how much metal working you are capable of. If you can get access to a lathe, then you can pretty much make all of this stuff yourself. Me though, I buy most of my equipment from CH.

So, check out the older posts, then ask lots of questions. Good luck to you!
Michael