Broke it

[7of7]

I broke my rebated boat tail die..
I was doing a run of 500,.. had it set up for the desired result at the top of the stroke, and when I got to 493,...Pow! I had a two piece die.
I hate it when that happens... Sent an email to Dave Corbin to find out how much that single die will cost to replace..

[ANeat]

ouch, I guess you knew right away something bad happened

[rbt50]

i hate when that happens.done it once with a jacket making die.

[scrapcan]

did the die split longitudinally (axial)? What were the parameters that you were working under? Jackets, types of cores? Were you seating cores and making the rebated boat tail in a single die? Just curious as I have read about the failures, but cannot afford to buy the dies to get to see one first hand.

[7of7]

I was in the second part of making rebated boat tails. I had everything set up so the top of the stroke created the formation of the step. At any rate, I was just going along,... then pow,... it split up the sides. As I said, I was going on the fast side,... as fast as I could go on the manual press...
I may have gotten a thicker jacket, and that may have caused a spike in the pressure., and due to the speed of the stroke, the additional force wasn't recognized and the die failed...
A bit of the learning curve.... Early on, I was using way to much force when trying to get the edges nice sharp edges. Of course, I was having problems with sticking, and in general was not very consistant, nor very happy...
After emailing Dave Corbin, I reduced the force I was using, and everything was going great, until the other day.
The only thing I can think of, is that I had one that was a little more in mass, and didn't feel it because the die relieved the pressure by breaking.
The next die set, I will be a bit more on the careful side.
The rebated boat tail is a two step process. The first step is to create a boat tail taper, and the next step is to swage the step into the boat tail.

[bohica2xo]

What is the total count on that tooling? Was this the 520th bullet formed, or the 52,000th bullet formed?

B.

[7of7]

It was probably around 800 or so... However, I did abuse this die... I managed to compress and bend an external punch,... without any problem at all,... didn't realize I did that either until the next day when I was looking at it because it didn't line up with the die any more...
I don't think it was a material or manufacturing fault... I am sure I overstressed it to begin with and when I hit a core that was just a little heavier than the others, with the way I had everythng set up,... ooops...

Next on my list is to find some good stock to make dies out of, and then figure out how to heat treat them.... I have a lathe, just need some additional tools to bore some holes, and take them up to the correct size, of course hone, and polish....
So far, I have made a couple internal and external punches... and a couple depriming pins...