Equipment to Swage with Small Hydraulic Press?

[OTShooter]

Is there any equipment out there intended to be used with a small (bottle jack type) hydraulic press? My poor old shoulder and limited shop space sort of preclude setting up another manual press, but the hydraulic gadget is already taking up space, so…maybe?

I’d appreciate any feedback on this.

Thanks in advance!

[rolltide999]

The short answer is "NO", at least none I ever heard of, and I have looked into the history of swaging as closely as I can.

There were some old die makers that made die sets for use on arbor presses. I understand these were only used by bench rest shooters, so probably only available in a few small calibers like 223 or 243. These were similar to "pound" dies, by report. I have never seen any, only read about them. One could build an adapter for anything I suppose, but I have never seen such or heard of one. I think a real danger with an adapter would be over pressuring dies, made for hand presses, on hydraulic presses with no pressure regulation. Mis-alignment would also be a concern with a make-shift adapter. Snapped dies and/or bent or broken punches would likely be the result. All dies and punches are made of certain materials hardened in certain ways depending on the presses they are intended for.

[DsGrouse]

I think there were some Vietnamese arbor-style slug press vids (for airguns) I saw on TikTok, Insta a while back, but that is about as close as it gets. It isn't really the same thing as jacketed swaged bullets.

[GhostHawk]

As I see it, a swage or reload press has a shaft which is fixed in position. So it only moves up and down.

A bottle jack has

A no way to attach a shaft, or die

B no way to control side movement

C no way to retract the shaft on release.

That is not to say it can not be done.

Think harbor frieght press powered with jack.
But that is only half of it. Still have to build the shaft, way to hold dies, way to position what is to be swaged. And how to extract.

Good Luck!

[DsGrouse]

I do know a number of swagers who make their own lead wire using a bottle/hydraulic set up. They use a lead puck squeezed trough a base with a hole and a sleeve. That type of set up isn't difficult to manage. I think most do lengths of 14 to 18". You'd obviously need a base and sleeve for each of your wire thicknesses.