...........I have a regular swageing press from RCE Enterprises (Richard, not Dave Corbin), but toyed around with the idea of one for the reloading press. CH made them and I don't know if they still do or not. Dave Corbin does continue to make them but they're a couple hundred bucks.
Other then ultimate strength there are 2 problems with swaging in a reloading press. The first and most problematic is that there is no means for automatic ejection of the finished product. To save myself some headache I decided the KISS principle would work, so they get tapped out of the die.
Above is the setup. I made this to create SWC and WC boolits with hollowbases. I thought they might make good target boolits for a 45 Colt. On the left in the photo is the ejector rod, which goes through the guide and nose punch seat. It's threaded 1/4-28 to accept the nose punches.
Next to the right are 3 washers of .05", 0.1" and 0.15" thickness. These can be used on the rod above the nose forming punch to help regulate it's height in the die. Next it the diebody itself. The top 1.5" is threaded for .75" to 5/8-18 for the guide/nosepunch stop, the bottom 1.5" is bored and honed to .4535" with a .5" long tapered lead in.
Finally last up is the 2 nose forming punches. The flare of the light kind of washed out the WC nose, and then there is the SWC punch. Below is the base punch which forms the HB and applies pressure via the ram.
Here are 5 swaged slugs. Starting from the left is a 500gr core slug that was .443" for use in the Corbin setup to make paper patched slugs for the Whitworth. To it's right was one I cut in half with a pair of side cutters, and it weighs 263grs. Next is a 190gr Lee SWC, then a 230gr Lee RN and finally a Lee 255gr. The 3 cast boolits are all WW alloy, the smooth sided slugs are pure lead.
A rather poor dark photo of the boolit bases. I'll need to cast up some of these in pure or very soft lead and then swage them to see how they do in the Vaquero. The die works real well and you don't have to lay across the handle to swage the boolits.
You can vary the height of the boolit in the die bore for it's length, and to place the press handle correctly. You can adjust the die's position in the press, you can adjust the ejector pin guide up or down in the die body and you can use one or more of the washers on the ejector pin below the pin guide.
.................Buckshot