Swaging Powder Coated ?

[Johnch]

A while back I cut a .460 dia. 350 gr wide flat nosed GC mold without grease groves
I have casted , powder coated and gas checked some out of soft lead alloy
Out of the BFR 45/70 they shoot well as a hunting bullet
But in my testing there was not much mushrooming at 100 yards
I know a bullet that large dose not really need to expand , but I would like as much energy transfer as possible
So I was thinking about cutting another mold with a HP pin

But I already made a swag die in .460 dia.
So I was thinking of swaging a wide HP into some of the bullets I already have made
I would just have to make a new nose punch

But I wondered if the already powder coated bullets would have any problems ?
As to bullet to bullet deviations cause by the powder coating ?

Your thoughts ?

Thanks
John

[DDriller]

I swage 450 grain Hi-Tek coated bullet putting a HP in them for a .458 Socom. Never had any trouble with them. The swage die should make them uniform.

[Johnch]

Thanks
That was what I was thinking
But I felt it wise to ask

John

[Willbird]

The very first thing I ever swaged was some .357 using a set of reloading press dies borrowed from a friend, I swaged some previously cast and powder coated bullets. I was able to even run them in backwards and made base into nose and vice versa and get a nice looking result as far as the powder coating was concerned, the powder is Harbor Freight red.



Pretty sure this is the cast bullet I started with, cast in air cooled WW metal.

[Forrest r]

Over the years I made several different hp nose forming dies along with store bought dies.

While they have their place I switched over to a forester hp tool.

That hp tool comes with a 1/16" & 1/8" drill bit (hp tool). It takes 5/32" shanks that hold those bits. You can also use a 5/32" 60* center drill to make an impressive hp. I make these hp's for a snubnosed 44spl with that 60* center drill bit.


The difference between a mold that cast hp's or a swaging die that swages hp's is that the bullets hp is limited to the size/shape of the hp pins in those molds/dies. The hp effective ness is fine tuned with alloys. With the forester hp tool, you can easily adjust the depth of the hp along with changing out tooling to make different shapes/sizes of hp's.

Any 5/32" shanked tooling can be used in it. I was thinking about ordering another cutting shank and opening it up to accept (3/16" or 1/4"???) shanked tooling. But as usual too many irons in the fire.

[Johnch]

I made a new nose punch with a HP stem
I also ran 20 of the 350 gr powder coated bullets through with the new nose punch
The nose punch made a perfect HP
But I might make another nose punch with a deeper HP ... Errr Maybe LOL

But that is as far as I have gotten

Oh BTW these bullets are powder coated with Harbor Freight Black powder coat
As the local Harbor Freight normally has Black and White

John