Star Question

[jcw1970]

I'm sure this a dumb question but how do you stop from getting flat points on spiral point bullets? trying to size a lyman 311413 and 311414 and keep crushing the points. It leaves a nice mark in the gas check on the bottom bullet.

[Echo]

Cast them base-first, using a proper-fitting nose punch. If you don't have one, but have one that is close, use it and put a little dab of epoxy in the cavity, wax the nose of a boolit, and set the nose punch down on the boolit, all the while doing this in the lube-sizer. When the epoxy sets up, you will have a nose punch that exactly fits your boolit.
If you don't have a proper nose punch, maybe one of the guys on the forum can make one for you, or you might even ba able to get one from Star/Magma.

[billyb]

This question came up some time back.I use a star for my handgun boolits. I have not used it for rifle boolits, Yet.One of the members here stated that he used short length's of wood dowel and pushes the boolits on through the sizer. Saves the nose, adds one more step. I think I will use his method when I deside what to size my rifle boolits to. Bill

[HeavyMetal]

Mke youself a couple of"follower" boolits.

Basically drill a hole in a couple you don't want using a countersink and try to center you spiral points in them as you push the lubed boolit out the bottom of the die.

In practice it works like this: install boolit you want to keep and push it down, thus lube and sizeing it. Then add follower boolit so that the "countersunk" portion ( which we hope you put in the base of the boolit) set's over your spiral point. Push it through.

Now add another keeper boolit and repeat! You will need two countersunk boolits to make this work and you'll get one sized and lubed "keeper" for every two pulls of the sizer handle but you will keep your points pointy! The boolit with the countersunk area will get a flat point on it but it was a donor and can be remelted in time!

Your nose punch should keep all the boolits straight and the countersunk area will protect the nose on the boolits you want to keep.

[jcw1970]

Mke youself a couple of"follower" boolits.

Basically drill a hole in a couple you don't want using a countersink and try to center you spiral points in them as you push the lubed boolit out the bottom of the die.

In practice it works like this: install boolit you want to keep and push it down, thus lube and sizeing it. Then add follower boolit so that the "countersunk" portion ( which we hope you put in the base of the boolit) set's over your spiral point. Push it through.

Now add another keeper boolit and repeat! You will need two countersunk boolits to make this work and you'll get one sized and lubed "keeper" for every two pulls of the sizer handle but you will keep your points pointy! The boolit with the countersunk area will get a flat point on it but it was a donor and can be remelted in time!

Your nose punch should keep all the boolits straight and the countersunk area will protect the nose on the boolits you want to keep.

I'm going to give this a try. It seems the easiest. Even with using the followers, it has to be faster than a Lyman 45.

Thanks