AR-15 and holow point problem.....FIXED!

[Rapidrob]

A few years back I built a AR-15A2 in 6.5 Grendel. This rifle has been a great shooter except when it came to Speer Hollow-Points. Even though the rifle's breech end is milled for the " M4 Cuts" it would jamb 98 % of the time using hollow-points. The Speer 100 grain HP was just a perfect little bullet for the 6.5 Grendel if it would feed. What to do since I have hundreds of these bullets to shoot?
Then I had a brain storm. What if I modified a .264 nose punch for a bullet lubra-sizer? And what to use to reshape the contour of the bullet top punch?
After much thought I had an idea that just might work.
Hollow point bullets have a soft copper alloy jacket that is made to expand. Too much force on the nose and it will collapse.
So, what I did was to install a .265 sizing die and a steel rod block to prevent the bullet from being pushed too far down into the die.
I found I had a set of Harbor Freight Glass drill bits. The shape of the drill tips ( carbide) were almost exactly the same shape of the Speer bullet!
I lubed up the top punch and drilled out to a depth I thought would work.
I found this would work on any brand luba-sizer type press using a top punch press. Hornandy Unique Case Lube was used to lube the nose of the bullet.
The force needed was about 25 pounds. Any more and the nose would be damaged. The hollow point was closed more than 50% and now feeds like it should. If I wanted to use the bullets for hunting,they still would open up.
Here are a few photos:
The original on the left and the closed down nose on the right.


The H.F glass drill bits. The two larger ones were used to drill out the top punch.


The modified top punch,it fits the nose of the bullet perfectly.


A piece of steel rod to prevent the center die rod from moving too far down and gives it a positive stop to compress the nose of the bullet.


Do they work, you betcha they do!

[MrWolf]

Nice ingenuity. Good job.

[AlHunt]

I had a similar problem getting round nosed cast bullets to feed in an AR (5.56), while spire points would feed fine. The problem turned out to be the cast were bumping into the front wall of the magazine as they were stripped. The round would nose up and jam at an angle into the chamber. Dremeling the front of the magazine down about a quarter inch solved the problem 100%.