No core seating for me.

[303Guy]

Wow! Thanks for that, pillardrill. How do you make the 'nose punch' so it doesn't leave a step? I'm getting my boolit noses to blend in in a separate operation.

I want to look into your copper tube bullet swaging. Patching and casting for a 22 is like micro-surgery! I am using my regular loading press for the 'swaging' I am doing. I'll need a lot more grunt for proper swaging. The 25 is a possible candidate too, if the patched boolits don't perform.

[pillardrill]

The nose punch was tricky to make and induced a lot of sleep loss until I had the proverbial brain fart. I simply placed a 308 bullet in the die (adequately centered) and cast a hard lead alloy on the side of the point. Remember I only needed to squish a 308 slug to 311 and for a few boolits. Well it worked.
I have never tried swaging smaller than 9mm but I guess it will be very difficult to form anything other than round nosed boolits. Still worth a try.

[303Guy]

Brilliant!

I do believe that swaging a bullet up has a little 'trick up it's sleave' so to speak. The spring-back of the copper is greater than the lead core, leaving the jacket nice and tight! That should be good for accuracy.

Have you put your mind to swaging 22 cals using 22LR cases?

I have actually made a push through die. I haven't gone any further but I still have the idea on back burner. I was thinking of taking the trouble to solder the formed jackets full - a bit expensive but still cheaper than store-bought and still the satisfaction of having made them myself! Not sure how do-able though.

Another idea you have given me - a swage die without any push out. Just strongly tapered to the rear so the swaging will just drop out, then pass the swaging through a push through die. For lead swagings, one could use the blead off hole on the boolit tip to dislodge the swaging if needs be.

[pillardrill]

303,

glad to have been of help.

I have never swaged .22 cases. Once on this site I saw people swaging fired cases filled with lead. As an experiment I filled a few .32 ACP cases with lead and then mashed them in my die to become .355" bullets. They worked well, you can see one with the other bullets I made.

Regards

Pillardrill

[303Guy]

Pistol cases are kinda scarce in my parts. 22LR cases are plentiful. Well, I started making my 22LR case swage die. It is not finished yet, requiring a fair amount more lapping to get the 'binding' out. The swaging does indeed dislodge through the 'blead off' hole. Here is my first swaging. Not great but it is the first one from an un-finished die. The principle works at least.

[pillardrill]

well done looks good. I guess you could make it hollow point too to make the best of the flat tip.

[303Guy]

Well, actually, ummm .... it was supposed to have a soft point but that bit got damaged in punching the bullet out the mold.

It's flipping not easy making a swaging die that small!

[pillardrill]

303,

it is never easy working in miniatures. I saw your 22 bullets and they look great.

You said that you resize them in the same die, why is it so?

In my die the slug goes in and comes out a bullet already sized. I check them for consistency and they never vary.

Do you place your 22 jackets in a boolit mold to fill them with lead?

I had that type of set up to fill empty bullet jackets or empty .32 acp cases. Pour the lead through the sprue plate and then cut the excess off. The weights were pretty even.

You should try the copper tube filled with lead thingy. I have some small diameter tubing but maybe its too big for .22, could be good for the 303".

Regards.

Pillardrill

[303Guy]

pillardrill,

I have a push through sizer I made previously. I use it to form the 22LR case into a jacket. I tried using a sprue plate thingy I made for casting into the formed jacket. That works great. The sprue just twists off. I then swage that in my die which is a closed die. It tapers forward which allows the swaging to drop out with a nudge through the bleed-off hole. (That's the theory anyway). Final sizing then gets done with the push through die. That way I get around the difficulty of making a decent nose punch! (Not to mention getting the swage die perfectly dimensioned. I'm still very early days in this die making thing!)

[303Guy]

pillardrill,

You've got me thinking some more - copper tube swaged 303 Brit bullets! I have this two-groove 303 Brit with fust damage in the bore. It does not like paper patched or plain cast boolits as the bearing surface of the rifling lands is just too small to not wear into the boolit. But that is my go-to bush hunting rifle. So, copper tube swaged bullets!

The other idea I mentioned at the beginning of this thread was to swage a nose hollow, fit a plastic ball then crimp the rim to hold the ball. The ball only needs to sit just past its 'equator' for the crimp to hold. I'm not going to persue this idea just yet as I ended up swaging a partially enclosed hollow point instead which I rather like.

[pillardrill]

303,

could you post a drawing of your setup kinda like I did cos a pic is worth a thousand words.

However I think I have understood what you are doing. I guess the bleed hole is at one end of the die not on a side. I would guess that that angle of taper would be self holding, but with lube maybe there is not much grab.

I guess you are limited in the powder charge you can use to drive a lead bullet through your 2 groove 303 cos it will not bear as it should.

Regards
Pillardrill

[303Guy]

I would guess that that angle of taper would be self holding,

It is. The nose gest damaged on ejection. I'll have to work on that. Maybe swage the bullet in two stages or accept a blunter nose. The die works fine for lead swaging.

(You can see I didn't have a decent cutting tool when I made this - that's why I didn't post a pic of it before! I'll get one next week when I've earned a bit more money).

Swaging Die


Blead-off hole on Swaging Die


Case Forming/Bullet Sizer Die



Just for fun :-



This curiosity is a neck sizer/over powder wad seater die I made a while ago when I had access to a better lathe. It compresses the powder just ahead of the seating so that the wad can't be pushed out by the compressed powder. It worked but I didn't adopt that method.

[pillardrill]

303,

my guess was correct then the bleed hole is at one end of the die. I had a similar problem in a die that was designed to put boat tails onto pistol bullets. I read that a boat tail is more useful on a slower moving bullet, go figure. The bullets would sometimes stick and the ejector rod would form a nice hollow point

If you have access to a lathe try to make a die like mine which has no ejection issues. Fill the jackets in a mold with a sprue cutter.

If you are interested I can tell you how to make the nose former since your bullets are sharply tapered the bullets may stick into it and you need to eject it.

Regards

Pillardrill

[303Guy]

If you have access to a lathe try to make a die like mine which has no ejection issues. Fill the jackets in a mold with a sprue cutter.

I do have a small lathe and I am filling the jacket through a sprue cutter.

It's fun figuring a way then finding others do it that way too!
I actually wanted to have a bleed hole so I could control the bullet weight.

I want to make a die set along the lines of yours for my two-groove. I'm trying to figure out how to fit a bleed hole into a nose punch. Should be easy on a bigger bullet.

I also want to build a swage press. I should start there so my dies will be taylored to it.

I too have been ending up with hollow points from the ejector rod! I turned that into my method of swaging hollow points.

Thanks again for you help and inspiration.

(I love your idea of casting the core into the copper tube - that's how I want to do it).

[pillardrill]

303,

I cut the copper filled tube to size with a "special" tubing cutter which should keep the weight even. I have to check on its consistency, if not I will make a better one

If you have a core mold or cut the cores from lead wire the variations in the internal dimensions of the mold and the cutting of the wire could make core weight inconsistent unless the core is sized. If you have same head stamped cases you should have no problem casting lead directly into the cases without worrying about the bleed hole.

In my setup I guess it would be necessary to measure the depth the plunger has been fed. A bleed hole needs to be fitted at the very tip of the bullet. It should have a form of shear to take of the extra lead. However come to think of it you will only have boolits of equal length not equal weight since only the lead would flow out and not the copper jacket. Also a nose former made in this way may not take the pressure.

I guess its better to start with equal weight boolit blanks.

Regards

Pillardrill

[pillardrill]

I cut a few slugs to check the weight variation. The length variation was .1mm in between slugs. Weight variation varied between a grain to 1.5 grains. I believe that with a more solid setup and not a hand held one the variations would be less. Also the cutter's blade doesn't go all the way to the center of the core and the pip left on each end may add to difference between one core and another.

[303Guy]

Thanks, pillardrill. Agreed. With my latest 22LR swage die set-up, there is no bleed hole. Initially, I did not realise I could cast the core directly into the jacket via a sprue cutter. My plan now is to have a set up to allow me to cast a row of then on a multiple prue cutter plate then just twist the blanks off. This fills the jacket flat with its mouth.

Have a look over on my 22 LR thread. I'll be adding my latest pics.

[pillardrill]

303,

that's the concept. The weight variation should be negligible. The remnants at the point were the cores are twisted off may add to the variation however you can still trim them with a knife, but that is going beyond maniacal.

Regards

Pillardrill

[303Guy]

pillardrill

So far the cast cores have cut off with no sprue remnants at all. Just a shiny spot where it was. I need to look into that to see what makes it twist off so flat! Small hole? Shape of sprue? Both?

[pillardrill]

303,

maybe its the shape of the sprue, since the sprue hole was probably drilled the shape would be conical and it would break at its weakest place.

Regards

Pillardrill