BTS 44 cal from 40 S&W cases testing

[buck1]

Well I thought I would start a new thred for the BTS 44 cal Boolits made from fired .40 S&W fired cases.
I got my Dies in today about 1pm. Very well packaged. I Also got Brians ejector.
I put his die in my RC press(with extended handle(YET ANOTHER STOLEN IDEA FROM BRIAN) lubed some seated cores and began swaging HIS included seated core slowly. I loosened the _base lock nut_ and kept running it in untill his core looked like his sample boolit, then locked her down.
Then I started feeding it my unweighed seated cores. Some lead came up short of the jacket noses because I didnt weaigh them, but 1 or 2 -#6 pices of shot fixed most with a second pull.
I am using the 175 gr. lee six cavity TL with mostly pure lead cores unmodified.
Boolits ran about 256.5gr on avarage and droped at .4295.
I had a surplus powder load for this wt of boolit that was a lighter target load. I seated some of these BTS boolits on top of it.

At this point I will say if you want to roll crimp you will need a canalure or you could use a tapered crimp if you like, but the brass case is not going to bite in to the brass boolit much if at all.

Well the wind is blowing at about 35-40 mile per hour today and only a fool would try to shoot in it.
So once I got to the range today with 10 rds of BTS style 44 Mag ammo and my trusty Redhawk , I did not try to record any groups , But I wanted to check the pressures,primer flattening, and recoil, and just basicly play with them and get a starting point.
Recoil was slightly more than with the cast boolits, pressures were about as mild as they were with the cast(looking at the primers). These are going to be Thumpers.

Lets recap .....dies came in at 1pm. At 4pm I was back home from the shooting these just born boolits at the range!
I have never swaged a boolit before today.
Brian I think you got something here.

[frankenfab]

I would like to see some pictures of this.

[BT Sniper]

Stories like this is what makes all the work worth it for me. Good to here everything went even better then could be expected. Wait till you see how good the recovered bullets look.

More people have shot my 44 cal bullets then any others. I'm sure before long we will have some good tested loads for these bullets. With most customers I recamend published starting loads for 265 grain bullets with these 255ish grain 44 cal BTS bullets.

Nice job there Buck. I knew it was a great way to make some very good bullets and it will certainly be a very cost effective way to shoot A LOT of bullets. Glad to see it can be figured out by those that have never swaged before. Of course this was my plan all along to get all of you that have ever been interested in swaging a chance to give it a try at a very affordable price. Now imagine all the fun your going to have! Making all sorts of bullets is only limited to your imagination now :idea: :Fire:

You know I forgot to include some of my 250+ grain 45s in with your order. Keep in touch and when I get a few extra I'll let you know.

SWAGE ON!

BT

[BT Sniper]

Frank,

A quick search of some of my threads on the 44 cal should result in quite a few pics and a lot of info. Feel free to ask around or even PM. Lots of info on this great bullet project here.

Good shooting.

BT

[buck1]

On the pics, well lests just say I dont use my WIFES camera much -anymore- . [smilie=1:
But just look at a few threads below and theres plenty of pics. I will try to sneak a few pick of some groups when the time comes (darn wind is suposed to blow again tomorrow , but I may get lucky).
One thing I didnt report on was the ejector rig Brian makes. I LOVE IT! It makes this whole process SMOOOOOTH AS HE77! It took about 25-30 seconds to install on my RC press.
Needless to say I have been bussy today and found that some of my cores that didnt quite fill out when cast worked fine with a pice or two of shot added after swaging and just run it up again, Good to go.
My 10 year old was wondering what I was up to. So I sat him down and let him make some (except for casting and annealing) He did it all start to finish. He flaired the cases, seated the cores, Put on the canalure,lubed and swaged 10 boolits just a slick as could be.
I had planned to post how I did this and that and adjusted what ever , but its pretty straight foward. The only adjustment was the base lock ring as every press would be a tiny bit differnt in hight. If you can adjust your case mouth flair die ,your more than qualified to set this up.
I am not just saying this to be nice or something, its one of those all to few things build by a shooter for a shooter.
I think I am going to bump up the load a bit and try to have some test loads for early in the morning, JUST IN CASE the wind dont blow!!!!!!!! .......Buck

[buck1]

Well I made it to the range , but it was windy but only about 20 -25 mph winds so I tryed some .
First I shot some cast 240s of a known good load to give some comparison.
The cast 240s 5 shot group at 30 ft made one hole about 3/4 CTC. Thats about right for this load.
second I shot the BTS at near mag loads but still a bit on the light side. The 5 shot group made one hole that measured 7/8 CTC.
No boolits were ever put on a scale. If the jacket looked like it was a bit shy I added a pice of shot or two.
Well I do feel happy now, As boolits that wont shoot well have no place on my guns. These shot nicely and held their own against a known great load.
I am thrilled!I will try to get some pics up....Buck

[buck1]

boolits pic

[BT Sniper]

[smilie=w: Nicely done! I have not tried to recover any of these one step 44s yet. Looks like you have one there. Can we get a close up? Think I may just have to load a few.

BT

[buck1]

let try this..
Thats a little better..
Thats the best I can get pic wise. You can see the base and get a good idea of the mushroom.
I will continue to work this load up to full 44 mag levels. I am going slowly to make sure all is safe. So far its lookin good!!!
I check out the mushroomed slug. It is at it widest .876 and get this I checked it twice.. 256.3gr. Theres a tiny bit of dirt but just a tad. thats almost 100% retenshion. Its still all there! :bigsmyl2:

[BT Sniper]

COOL! Last question.... Pure lead core or wheel weight alloy? With my wheel weight cores a small amount of the mushroom petels would break off but still give +90% retention. Guess that would equal more penitration. Either way I think it is some pretty darn good results.

Good Shooting. SWAGE ON!

Bet I know what your going to be doing in your spare time for a while now. :)

BT

[buck1]

Pure or mostly pure lead core.
I figure with your heavy duty die parts that can handle wheel wts and soft lead cores, these dies will last forever! Plus I also have the option of useing Wheel WTS to change the way a boolit acts on impact or if soft lead gets hard(r) to find.

The wind is dieing down a bit, I may have just enugh time to try these out full throtle!

[buck1]

Well heres some full house44 magnums ,5 shot group, BTS boolit , wc820 surplus powder, at 30 ft open sights . looks to be about 5/8"ish group CTC. Almost cover it up with a nickel.
Well I dont have to buy .44 jacketed bullets EVER AGAIN! :shock: I MAKE MINE FOR FREE!!
[smilie=w: [smilie=w: [smilie=w: [smilie=w: [smilie=w: [smilie=w:

[BT Sniper]

Your going to need a lot of 40 s&w brass and lead now :) I now where to find some good deals on brass if you guys ever need some I'll point you in the right direction.

Awesome job Buck. Good shooting. Once word gets out I imigine I'm going to get pretty busy.

BT

[Daywalker]

Buck, are you cutting any of your 40 brass? Or are you leaving the 40 brass at their regular length?

I am going to be making these for my Ruger Super Black Hawk 44 mag.... I have my dies just have not started with those yet as I am still trying to perfect my 45's....

Thanks for the info, Great job!!!

[buck1]

BT..That covers the .44s and the .40s, What else have you came up with so far? :brokenima




daywalker....... They are NOT cut, sorted ,or weaighed. And I shot all these loads through a Ruger Redhawk.

I annealed the cases by standing them up on the case heads in a dutch oven and heated untill the bottom of the pot untill it had a light red glow at dusk.
flare the mouth. seat the core with a flare die, canalure and swage.


I bought the same saw you and BT have, and plan to play with it. But I dont see the need to do anything to the .40 to .44 jackets. In fact I belive anything else we do to them is going to be for looks as these work as is. (plug and play) LOL!
I have no no news papers or phone books saved up right now, to do some (flesh expanshion tests). But I have been shooting the .44 mag for 25-30 years. and have done TONS of testing and I have no doubt these will be fine on game up to and including deer.
I am going to kill some water bottles as I have used these for years with the news paper tests and will be able to get a good idea of whats happening.
I am getting the flat point punch for use on bigger game, but I most likely will never need it. BUT WE GOT TO PLAY dont we! LOL.......Buck

[DukeInFlorida]

.40 S&W brass, cleaned, $30 a thousand, PLUS shipping, flat rate boxes.

I have lots and lots.

[BT Sniper]

[QUOTE=buck1;860164]BT..That covers the .44s and the .40s, What else have you came up with so far? :brokenima



As they say this is only the begining. I'm going to put to gether some heave 45 cals from the 40 S&W brass. You where interested in some .451-.452s correct?

Don't think there is really any more you need from those 44s, looks like you have a great shooter there. Anything else will be just for fun and looks or COOL factor.

If you want to really sqezze the most out the acuracy of that redhawk of yours I have made bullet that have shot groups 1/2 MOA better then the 40 S&W brass from cutting off the tops of necked down 30-06 brass and used that for the jacket. I'll see if I can get some pics. This works great with all the berdan primed brass out there.

Truly the only limits to making bullets is your imagination. I have said it before but I used to think bullets required expensive tools and machines as well as a bit of magic to make. Now I know better and feel like a bit of a magician :)

So what do you want to make now? We can make it happen. How about 308s from FN 5.7x28 brass, .357s from .223, .451s from 40S&W, .410s from 9mm, and soon I hope .416s from 40 S&W and .458s from 40 S&W and 45acps.

:Fire: - - - - - - - :killingpc

BT

[buck1]

I shot the water bottles and they blew up BIG TIME. The only other bullets that blew them up like that were XTPs.
Next and lastly I shot the Redhawk untill I could see brass fouling on the lands.
I admit I was a little spooked about the brass fouling and cleaning.

I gave the Redhawk a light scrubbing with shooters choice and a bronze brush, let it set about 20 min and then a wet patch and a dry patch and it was GONE. It seemed easier to clean than copper! I didnt expect that!

My time off can be rather hard to come by so I crunched a lot in to a rare 3 day weekend. After reading all the posts from the .40/9mms, The learning curve was short to none.



BT..
"So what do you want to make now? We can make it happen. How about 308s from FN 5.7x28 brass, .357s from .223, .451s from 40S&W, .410s from 9mm, and soon I hope .416s from 40 S&W and .458s from 40 S&W and 45acps."

HMMMM I got to think on what should be next! the .452 .458 .308 or even .475 from .45acp??
I got to go hide easter Eggs now , but you know what my mind will be on! LOL
Cheers and thanks for a great user friendly tool that works better than promised!!
..............Buck :grin:

[buck1]

I thought I would add this. I was looking closely at my recovered .44 boolit and noticed it opened up right to the canalure then stoped there. I had got so bussy with everything I had forgot to check this. Thats a good thing!
But I will try some without a canalure and with a tapered crimp, to see if I can get some to really tear up like a Speer TNT. Would be great for varmits!
Anyone else playing with these yet? I would love to hear some other reports!...Buck