I had my gorilla muscled buddies helping me point form .224 bullets, and was having a horrible time with ejection pins bending. What it was is that they were trying to process the point forming step too fast.
Here's my fix, and it seems to work VERY well......
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Trying to be productive, I moved the point forming tool for the 224 bullets over to the left side press. I wanna get those finished up.
If you recall, we discovered a bent pin from the previous use, and cut a new one to length, and installed that, when we did the bullet swage party last Friday. .
As I moved the point form die over, and worked at setting it up, I discovered that the spring loaded top pin wasn't operating properly. I opened the die up, and discovered..............
Another bent ejection pin. So... started thinking about what might be going on, and here's what I come up with.............
1) The preforms are properly lubed, no issues there.
2) The tool is properly set, so that the point gets closed up nice and tight. No problem there.
3) The ejection pin is very small diameter. .062", and well over an inch long.
4) When ejecting the formed bullet after swaging, the lube acts to create a SUCTION in the point form die.
5) If activating the ejection pin too fast, the suction will overwhelm the strength of the .062" long pin, and cause it to bend.
TRYING TO GO TOO FAST will do that.
6) As a test, I ran the preforms into the die at normal speed, allowed it to dwell at the top of the stroke for a second (the lead flow needs that extra time at the top of the stroke), and then slowly and GENTLY started pushing on the ejection pin, allowing for a slight chance to break the suction. Perfect ejection.
I was able to run many hundreds of the bullets using this technique, and yes... it's slower... BUT, not a single bend in the ejection pin. And, not a single stuck bullet.
I'll add this to the instructions for the .224 bullet swage, and we'll need to remember to be more careful in the future with these ejection pins. We cannot just go ka-chunka, ka-chunka when making these. Brut force and speed are not conducive for good bullet forming.
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Hope this helps others also....................