swage question, or several

[Gussy]

I'm toying with the idea of swaging my cast bullets to make them "match grade". Take bullets of the same weight and apply the needed pressure make them physically uniform and slightly change the shape.

I haven't looked into swaging equipment that much and hate to bother a manufacturer with a lot of odd ball questions, so I thought I'd just ask the odd ball questions here.

Most of my shooting is BPCR and large 335 to 550 grain bullets cast 20-1 to 30-1. Since I'm not starting with wire, will a heavy standard press work? If not, is there much used equipment out there, I would like to start out that way? I've seen presses listed, but which brand is best?

Could a standard mould be used as the die?

BA lists swaged match grade bullets and I think they are in the higher alloy range for hardness so I know it can be done.
Gus

[Bent Ramrod]

Gussy,

My swaging experience is mostly with jacketed .22 caliber, however I have done the occasional half-jacketed .30 caliber on my RCBS Rock-Chucker press. Neither of these applications seems to strain anything unduly. I don't do "production runs" but do make several hundred at a time for personal use. The cores are pure lead, no alloy.

I started swaging on a Pacific Super press, which was a C press with a couple little bolsters on each side of the C. It was perfectly OK as far as strength went, but the simple linkage on the lever was pretty strenuous for the operator. It also tended to raise the loading bench when I heaved on the lever. I would recommend a good O press like a RCBS or Redding with a compound lever linkage as the minimum for any serious swaging for somebody making bullets for himself.

If you are merely truing up cast bullets, I would think a press like this would suffice, even for big bullets. The alloy ought to be fairly soft and the die cavity should be a close approximation of the shape of the cast bullet. You would size and lube the bullet in a standard lubrisizer, making sure the grooves were full of lube. You would lightly lube it with swaging lube and then put the bullet in the swage die and give it a slight bump or squeeze to bring it up to form. The lube would prevent the collapse of the lands on either side of the lube grooves, the bullet nose would be minimally (or not at all) reshaped and the base would be flattened. A die for this setup would be a cylinder of your bullet diameter with a top (knockout) punch the shape of your bullet nose and the bottom punch a cylindrical plug with a flange to fit in your shell holder.

Check with either of the Corbins, Richard or Dave and see what they say. I think Richard makes such swages for paper patch bullets.

[floodgate]

Gussy:

THE name in swaging is Corbin (Edit: as Dave says above, there are TWO Corbins, both knowledgeable on the topic). Their hardware is VERY pricey, but they offer a couple of good books on the topic. C-H made a neat little swaging press (sort of a close-coupled version of their C press) back in the '60's, and there was one of these floating around on our board with dies a week or two ago. Lyman used to offer adjustable-length core moulds in .22, .30, .38, .44 and .45 that cast somewhat undersized cylindrical slugs up to about 1" long; and just about any defunct mould could be bored out to make a specific size. There are a couple of makes of rolling tools that can be used to form grease grooves (Corbin offers one), or a tubing cutter could be adapted for the job. I just read in C. H. Billinghurst's letter home in the 1870's from the buffalo-hunting frontier (in the most recent "Black Powder Cartridge News") that "pressed" - i.e., swaged - bullets gave improved accuracy in his Sharps. Even though it has all been done long before (at least back into the 1840's, by the Wessons and others), there's a lot to be explored and reported on here. And they'd still be "boolits", wouldn't they?

floodgate

[Gussy]

Went to the Corbins' site. A lot of information. I hope I get a little free time this winter to give it a try.
Thanks,
Gus

[dragonrider]

Swaging is not impossibly to do at home, actually making the swage dies is not impossible is what I should have said, my first hobby was home shop machining so I have a machine shop in my barn. Not long ago I had the need for larger diameter bullets for my 45-70 but had no molds that would get the required size. So swaging became the answer, actually the idea came from our own Swagerman, who else right?
He uses a Lee press for his work, but I had this hiding in the barn it is a hydraulic press once used to swage hydraulic fittings onto hydraulic hose.

next came the making of a die, all it is is a hole of the required diameter bored and highly polished to x depth in the material, and a smaller diameter hole drilled through the rest for the stem of the nose punch.

then the nose punch was made

and a base punch

these parts then get assembled into the press and this is what happens, this is a video, just click on the pic.

this is the boolit before and after. On the right is before and left is after, the nose is reshaped and the diameter has been bumped up from .459 to .4615 and it is somewhat shorter.

The benefits that I have noted so far with these boolits is a marked decrease in leading and improved accuracy, not moa accuracy because I am not capable of such but improved none the less. Next I need to make one for 360, and maybe 313, as they get smaller they get more difficult to make.
I don't want to give you the impression that this was thought about and done in a short time, it took some time for the idea to gel in this old mind and several tries to get the die right. The nose shape took the longest to get right, my initial intention was not to reshape the nose just to bump up the size but what you see is what I ended up with.

[Gussy]

One hard slap to the forehead......Duh. I have the same type of press sitting out in my shop electric/hydraulic set up. I just need to make some dies. One thousand thank yous.
Gus

[Buckshot]

I'm toying with the idea of swaging my cast bullets to make them "match grade". Take bullets of the same weight and apply the needed pressure make them physically uniform and slightly change the shape.

Well you could, but you could accomplish the same thing without the need to scale all your boolits. You'd do it via a bleed hole. For a one die setup the bleed hole would be down through the base punch. This way you can utilize all your boolits after a visual inpsection for imperfections. Scaling wouldn't be necessary and they'd all come in after swaging to a tenth grain or better.

I haven't looked into swaging equipment that much and hate to bother a manufacturer with a lot of odd ball questions, so I thought I'd just ask the odd ball questions here.

I have Richard Corbins "Walnut Hill" press, below



On the right is one of a couple die sets I made to use in the press. In this press, the die body moves up and down and is screwed into the hole there in the crossarm. On the right is the base or nose forming punch, which is stationary and goes into a die looking body (missing in the press photo) in the top crossarm. It depends on how you make the die, the job the punch can perform.

On the left is the ejector body and pin. The body goes down inside the ram that moves the central crossarm up and down. The ejector pin runs up through the die to push the finished boolit up and out



This is a die I made to make 58 cal Pritchit type Minie' boolits. The left photo shows a Lee Target Minie' ready to enter the die. On the right is the result. A 478gr Pritchit Minie' with a smaller hollow base and heavier skirts. You can see the ejector pin has come up through the die and pushed the boolit up

Most of my shooting is BPCR and large 335 to 550 grain bullets cast 20-1 to 30-1. Since I'm not starting with wire, will a heavy standard press work? If not, is there much used equipment out there, I would like to start out that way? I've seen presses listed, but which brand is best?

Any large 'O' frame press with compound linkage has the juice to swage soft lead slugs. A possible problem that C-H saw (apparently) was the shellholder 'T' slot collapsing. In any event, they offered (may still offer) a replacement ram that was hardened to eliminate the possibility.



I made the above dieset to use in a Rockchucker. It takes previously cast and lubesized slugs and can turn them into WC's, SWC's with or without hollowbases, or turn'em around and point the HB out for a mojo hollowpoint. See below:



These were all cast fairly hard, and the commercial ones WERE hard! However since they were short the press could handle it. I have no idea how much used equipment is out there as I've never bothered to look. Nor can I say who has the best press, as the only 'real' swage press I've used in the Walnut Hill from Richard Corbin.

Could a standard mould be used as the die?

I can't see how it could successfully be done. I can think of a couple was a guy might attempt it, but I wouldn't.

BA lists swaged match grade bullets and I think they are in the higher alloy range for hardness so I know it can be done.
Gus

In the above photo, on the lft is the nose forming die and ejector punch from Corbin (RCE). Up top are some cavity depth setting pins of various lengths I made to set the core forming mould. The mould has 5 adjustable cavities so you drop a pin into a cavity and then run the base adjuster up, then transfer the pin to the next cavity and do the same, and so on for each.

Underneath the pins are some 'as cast' cores. Basicly lead cylinders. Below those atthe bottom are cores that have been through the base forming-bleed die. In this die is where the cores are all brought to the exact same weight via bleeding off a bit of lead.



Here you can see the extruded lead wires. This way too much lead to be extruding, but it was my first time and I'd made the cores to heavy.

Continued, next post..............................

[Buckshot]

This is what I have after a trip through the final forming die. A 1-1/2 R ogive cup based slug for paper patching. These were really too heavy at 580 grains but I patched them and shot them anyway. Waste not, want not.



This is more like it. These are 540gr hollowpoints. I can form HP's by putting shims under the ejector pin body to elevate it into the forming die. In essence the lead is formed around the ejector pin.

The various dies that I made for this press were simply low carbon 1018 steel but was NOT bought at a big box store, as who knows what that stuff is. Rather then heat treating them I just used larger 1 1/4" stock. The punches however were made of O-1 high carbon steel that was turned polished and hardened. For ejector pins I use the shanks of aviation drill bits (long).

.............Buckshot

[Gussy]

Buckshot, You answered a bunch more questions. Great photos and that helps see how things are done. You have done several of the things I planned on. This gives me a real head start. Now to find the time. I can see the need for LOTS of time. So many projects and so little time.
Thanks
Gus

[Willbird]

I'm wondering how much STOMP can be generated with a large leadscrew ?? A press with a leadcrew to provide the smash, and dies that are "dead length" (the punch having a shoulder that comes into firm contact with the die when it is fully closed)in nature MIGHT be easier to make than a toggle type press. You could even use a ballscrew I suppose.

We had an old pull broach at one place I worked right out of high school, it used a 2" or more dia leadscrew with a square thread to pull a keyway broach thru a part, a similar one was used to broach the keys on the bottom of milling machine vises and dividing heads as well

I'm thinking I want to swage some Muzzle loader bullets to use in 50 caliber sabots, commercial ones run $1 each or sometimes more including the sabots. For use in sabots no grease grooves are needed or wanted...alloy would probably be air cooled WW or some alloy of that and indoor range lead. PR bullets makes theirs out of PURE lead....and they calim to maybe be the most accurate made...I think some of their accuracy is due to the fact that they do not have a plated jacket like some ML bullets do...from what I have read plated jacket bullets are not super accurate.

PR has some bragging groups on their page from a 50 caliber TC encore under .300" for 3 shots at 100 yards.

I'd also like to make some with a DEEP holow cavity for shooting woodchucks, the brother law and I have it in our heads to use the ML for chucks on closer shots anyway to keep in practice with them for Deer . I have a 50 caliber Omega, he has a 50 caliber Encore, both 28" bbls, both 50 caliber, both 1/28 twist.

Bill