Below is a quote from Veral Smith's site concening plans for making a Freecheck type tool. We've (we here,not me an Veral) been talking about it for some time and now that Hornady has discontinued the 338 GCs this might be an opportune moment for just such a device to come on the market.
" I have been debating the manufacture of a gas check maker which mounts in and is powered by a standard reloading press and uses the new 24 oz beer cans for material. (They are thicker than the smaller cans, with work fine but are a bit dainty.)
To make checks with this tool, strips which are cut from the side metal from the cans, is fed through a slot, the checks being punched out and formed in one stroke of the press. The checks are colledted in the hollow punch, which is removed from the press just as you'd remove a sized cartridge case, and the checks poured out into a container. The prototype which I made, produces close to 1000 in an hour after the strips are cut and ready, and the tube of this unit hold about 10 checks. This means, remove and dump the checks that often. I may be able to up capacity of the tube some.
Ideally the customer would purchase a mold specivically for these checks. This means the base band would be cut about .004 smaller than sizer diameter, so hard bullets can be checked without shearing the checks. Or the same checks will fit any plainbase mold of the caliber and will size on without shearing if sizing is done while bullet hardness is below about 16 bhn. This means those using the most popular alloy today, whcih is water quenched wheel weights, would have to remove bullets from the water, blow them dry and size within a maximum time of about 2 to 3 hours after casting, or any time shorter. Also the checks will not give full performance if an existing plain base mold has a base band which is wider the the checks will cover. Performance increase will be very worthwile, but the base band must be a pecise length to get optimum performance the these thin aluminum checks, with a grease groove forward of the check to collect lead scrapings.
If interested in such a tool, please email me at LBTisAccuracy@Imbris.net. I expect the price will have to be at least $15 per tool, which will high quality heat treated tool steel, capable of very long life. And I would only produce the most popular calibers, at first at least. 38 44 45 The 45 would work with rifle and pistol, but may require two extra parts, which would raise the price some. I will experiment with feeding multiple layers of metal through to see if it will produce stacked checks which will fit standard gas check shanks. Performance has already been proven with the free check makers, but production with my tool is the concern here. If you email me, I'll respond after perhaps three weeks with an answer of whether demand warants production.
I've sat on this idea for approximately 20 years, my friends. I was already busy then, and not really excited about the thin aluminum stock. Business is slack enough now to consider it, and the new, and very abundant 24 oz cans make the concept quite attractive."
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Originally Posted by 44man
