Swage/size????

[abunaitoo]

In simple terms, can someone tell me the difference between swaging and sizing????

[Bigjohn]

There can be several inturpretations placed on the words; but the ones I know are;

SWAGE:- take a lump of lead, slug or normally undersized boolit and by placing it into a die then applying pressure (lots of) via a plunger, form a boolit. Normally smooth sided for Paper Patch Projectiles. Other variations have been know.

So basically, you are forming the finished boolit from metal.

SIZE:- Normally means reducing an oversize (diam.) boolit down to one at or closer to requirements for the particular barrel dimensions. Sizing of the boolit nose can also be done if you have the technics and equipment.

So basically you are reducing an oversize boolit to suit the Firearm.

There may be other descriptions of what I have just described and someone will add them.

John.

[grumpy one]

That's a good question, because I don't think there necessarily is one. The term swaging is only used for cold-forming metals as a way of shaping them. This can mean squashing them in a die, or forcing them through a hole. If the same thing was done with the metal heated it would be called forging.

The various methods we use for sizing bullets are all swaging processes. However I guess it was considered not specific enough to suit the marketing people long ago - perhaps people making light-duty machines for swaging bullets down a couple of thousandths of an inch didn't want to call them swagers, in case somebody thought they could use them for bullet swaging - which, being a process for fully forming a whole bullet (albeit from a very soft alloy) takes a pretty serious heavy press. That is, as I said, a guess.

Bullet sizing is a swaging process. Cold forming bullets is another swaging process, but a very different one.

[floodgate]

abunaitoo:

For practical purposes, with respect to bullets/boolits, think of "sizing" as squeezing the sides of the workpiece to make it smaller in diameter (and longer), and "swaging" as squeezing it end-wise to make it fatter (and shorter). Sometimes we do both, as in sizing the bearing surface down to fit the barrel grooves (plus a thousandth or so), but also applying a bit of extra force to reshape the nose or to swell it a bit to fit the throat or to ride the barrel lands.

floodgate