Link to thread detailing Old Fashioned Bullet Swaging

[Snidely70431]

I wrote this thread for the black powder forum. Thought it might be of interest to handloaders.

https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/old-fashioned-bullet-swages-from-scratch.848469/

 

[forrest r]

Looks like you're using a arbor press to swage your bullets.

Swaging leads bullets starts with a good core, junk in/junk out. Most either use lead wire or cast their cores. I see you chose to cast your cores. The voids/wrinkles are from the cylinders being cold. Some swagers use cast bullets for their cores. A simple swaging die made to swage 32cal (.314") hbwc's. I cast the lee 311-93-1r bullets with soft lead and then lubed them. Then used this simple swaging die in an arbor press to form that .311" cast rn bullet into a .314" hbwc.


I left the hbwc base slightly rounded/beveled for ease of loading. Those home swaged hbwc's pictured above were just as accurate as these cast wc's/hbwc's pictured below.

 

[forrest r]

Another simple way to make lead cores is to use an old bullet casting mold or buy a blank mold. This is a modern lee 2 cavity mold that uses the round common style of locator pins to keep the mold blocks/halves centered. The old style lee molds use pins that look like pencil lead and are sideways in 1 mold 1/2.


Anyway use a modern lee mold and drill the cavities out to the diameter you want your core. Drill the hole all the way thru the mold. Take a piece of plate steel and drill holes in it and mount/secure it to the bottom of the mold. Close the mold and use the same drill you drilled the cores with to mark the centers of those holes on your bottom plate. Remove the plate and drill and tape it to accept a screw or bolt. Take the head of the screw/bolt you plan on using and turn the head down to fit the holes you drilled in the mold to cast your cores. Screw the screw/bolt up in the core mold until you have the weight of the bullet you want and then put a nut on the screw/bolt locking it in place. This is how you make an adjustable core mold. The adjustable core mold pictured above was made to cast .185" cores (left side) for swaging 22cal bullets using a 10/32 machine screw. The right core is a .300" core designed to cast a core for 30cal bullets using a 1/4-20 bolt.

Using that core mold pictured above and home made swaging dies I swaged the bullets on the left for the 223rem & 308w


As a control I used this jacketed 30cal bullet in the same home made 308w swaging die.


And these 22cal jacketed bullets made in the same home made swaging dies.


Swaging bullets starts with a good core. You might consider making a good core mold.

 

[Snidely70431]

Not an arbor press, just a ball peen hammer.

Actually, the core I used for the bullet in the picture was cast in a cold mold and had wrinkles. In the book I took inspiration from, Ned Roberts emphasizes the need to try to use the same weight and number of blows for each bullet, and that the blows from the hammer eliminate voids in the bullet. Needless to say, since this is my first attempt, I have not worked out all the wrinkles (pun intended). In fact, Roberts talks about hitting the cores as well as the finished bullets to eliminate voids.

Since I am making bullets for use in muzzle-loading rifles I don't need to make many. If I go to the range and fire 10 rounds, it's a lot.

 

[Snidely70431]

Another simple way to make lead cores is to use an old bullet casting mold or buy a blank mold. This is a modern lee 2 cavity mold that uses the round common style of locator pins to keep the mold blocks/halves centered. The old style lee molds use pins that look like pencil lead and are sideways in 1 mold 1/2.
View attachment 829391

Anyway use a modern lee mold and drill the cavities out to the diameter you want your core. Drill the hole all the way thru the mold. Take a piece of plate steel and drill holes in it and mount/secure it to the bottom of the mold. Close the mold and use the same drill you drilled the cores with to mark the centers of those holes on your bottom plate. Remove the plate and drill and tape it to accept a screw or bolt. Take the head of the screw/bolt you plan on using and turn the head down to fit the holes you drilled in the mold to cast your cores. Screw the screw/bolt up in the core mold until you have the weight of the bullet you want and then put a nut on the screw/bolt locking it in place. This is how you make an adjustable core mold. The adjustable core mold pictured above was made to cast .185" cores (left side) for swaging 22cal bullets using a 10/32 machine screw. The right core is a .300" core designed to cast a core for 30cal bullets using a 1/4-20 bolt.

Using that core mold pictured above and home made swaging dies I swaged the bullets on the left for the 223rem & 308w
View attachment 829392

As a control I used this jacketed 30cal bullet in the same home made 308w swaging die.
View attachment 829393

And these 22cal jacketed bullets made in the same home made swaging dies.
View attachment 829394

Swaging bullets starts with a good core. You might consider making a good core mold.

Thanks for the ideas for core molds. I have a 2-cavity Lee mold for casting .50 round balls and .50 320 REAL bullets, and intend to make some aluminum molds to fit the handles eventually.

My muzzle loaders are .50 and .45 calibers and I want to make some heavy bullets to fire subsonically. Buffalo Arms sells 550 grain and 600 grain bullets in .502 diameter, but I like having the ability to make different weights and diameters. Anyway, I am a tinkerer even more than a shooter and I have more fun in my shop than at the range.

 

[PapaG]

One of the worst investments dad and I made was a RCBS Swage-O-Matic back in the late fifties. Half jackets, lead wire, and the machine made great looking bullets with lots of different points that were a loader's nightmare, leading as if you were tinning the bore for soldering.
Now, for the old muzzle loaders, or for full and three quarter jacket bullets, good stuff. I decided after hours of scrubbing that I'll stick to casting or buying jacketed bullets.

 

[Snidely70431]

One of the worst investments dad and I made was a RCBS Swage-O-Matic back in the late fifties. Half jackets, lead wire, and the machine made great looking bullets with lots of different points that were a loader's nightmare, leading as if you were tinning the bore for soldering.
Now, for the old muzzle loaders, or for full and three quarter jacket bullets, good stuff. I decided after hours of scrubbing that I'll stick to casting or buying jacketed bullets.

With muzzle-loaders shooters are mostly using paper patching or sabots. The soft lead never touches the bore.

 

[PapaG]

With muzzle-loaders shooters are mostly using paper patching or sabots. The soft lead never touches the bore.

Yeah, I've done that also.

 

[forrest r]

Yup did ton's of 1/2 jacketed bullets back in the 9's. Had 2 different herter's swaging presses. Started out with a swage-o-matic in 1990 and got a 9-ton a couple years later. Sold the swage-o-matic a decade ago but still have 2 9-tom presses along with dies to swage 308/311/355/357/358/429/430/451 bullets with multiple nose profiles. I also have bump dies for the 9-ton presses that true the base of a 30cal bullet along with matching the the bullet's nose profile to the ball throat/leade/throat/bore of a 308w chamber.

I make my own swaging dies for a rcbs rock chucker, herter's 9-ton along with dies for an arbor press. I also make my own die's for a lyman 450 sizer along with bump dies for that 450.

With the coming of age of coated bullets it's worth while to revisit the soft swaged pure lead bullets. A bump die can be used for a total swage/remake of a bullet when using pc. Problems with cast bullets are things like nose slump if pushed too hard, the wiper grooves a weak point during the rotational torque exerted on the bullets nose when it starts in the lands & is spinning/twisting while the back of the bullet is still being pushed strait forward and expanding in the ball throat. Same thing happens with the huge, deep lube grooves that cut the diameter of the core/center of the bullet in 1/2. The top bullet is a standard lyman 311413 "Squib" design that is seated out into the throat/lands until it was extremely hard to close the bolt. You can see how much of the bullet engaged the rifling's. The bottom bullet was the same bullet as the top bullet, but this time it was ran thru a bump die. The bump die has a 3/4* angle allows the bullet to sit evenly engraved into the rifling the whole length of the leade/throat/to the .300" point of the bbl. You can also see where the ball throat is and how long it is/affects the bullet (the distance from the case mouth to where the compressed wiper groove is (filled with lube now) just before where the rifling starts to engrave the bullet.


After the nose profile is established the back of the bump die can swage/size the body of the bullet. I chose a tapered body that is 3.09" at the gc down to .309", 1/1000th's less than the .310" ball throat. Then the nose profile kicks in at .308" and tapers down to .302".


Left is a .301" paper patch bullet and right is a lee 230gr tl blackout bullet that started out life with a cast boattail. I've made 3 different length bump dies for the 30cal bullets along with 2 different nose profiles and a flat base pin and a cupped edge pin for gas checks.

Swaging dies/presses can actually be used for so much more than swaging simple lead or copper cupped bullets.

 

[PapaG]

I have, in my "save it for who knows" box, two core moulds, by Lyman. Adjustable, double cavity, in 38 and 44 caliber sizes from my old days of experimenting with swaging. Any interest?

 

[forrest r]

I have, in my "save it for who knows" box, two core moulds, by Lyman. Adjustable, double cavity, in 38 and 44 caliber sizes from my old days of experimenting with swaging. Any interest?

Have a couple laying around myself. Have the herter's adjustable 30/38/44*45 molds along with the 30 & 22cal mold I posted in a picture above. The core mold that gets used the most anymore is a fixed core 8-cavity that makes cores for the 223rem. Doesn't take long to make a pile of cores to turn 22lr cases into 58gr hp's.

 

[Snidely70431]

As I have written elsewhere, I am more of a tinkerer than a shooter. Making pound dies - to borrow Corbin's terminology - out of some old scrap I had is interesting. Turning out thousands of bullets is not. I want to make a core mold similar to the one in post #3 of this thread. Once I have made a few other things relating to pound dies I will likely move on to other things.

 

[Snidely70431]

This is from the Corbin web site, apparently their latest iteration of their pound dies:



Pound Die, Smooth Ogive Style

Quantity in Basket: None
Catalog No.: PD-2
Price: $750.00
Shipping Weight: 12.00 pounds

Enter bullet caliber (diameter) in inches:
Enter desired weight range in grains:
Diameter of flat tip, inches:
Optional Note:
Select Base Shape:
Flat Base
Cup Base
Dish Base
Hollow Base
Base Guard (BG) Base
Custom (enter specs)
Enter custom base details:
Enter optional HP length and diameter:

Quantity:


This is an 1890's style "hammer" swage, or "pound die" (so called because you "pound" it with a rawhide mallet to swage the bullet). It consists of a die body which fits into a larger diameter supporting base, a base punch with a large head, a second supporting base with a hole to catch the ejected bullet, and a long ejection punch to push the bullet out.

The lead core is cast (or cut from lead wire) to the desired weight and length. Then it is lubricated with Corbin Swage Lube, and put into the die body. The die body is placed over the tip sealing punch and support base assembly so that the punch mounted in the support base fits into the small ejection pin hole. The length of the punch has been carefully synchronized with the die cavity so that the punch reaches the exact end of the cavity and seals the die.

The large head base punch is then put into the larger hole in the die, so that at least a full caliber and a half of punch length is supported inside the die cavity. Using a rawhide mallet, or a weighted plastic-faced hammer, strike the punch head firmly as close to the punch axis as you can. Try to avoid striking at an angle. One or two firm blows with a 3 to 5 pound mallet will generate enough pressure within the die to swage the bullet.

The large headed base forming punch is then removed, and the die is lifted off the tip sealing base. The die is then turned over so that the large end of the cavity is down, and placed over the second support base (with the hole through it). The long, thin ejection punch is put into the small hole in the die, and pushed or tapped gently to eject the finished bullet.

This style of die is most often included as part of a presentation rifle package, being made for the specific diameter of a slug gun (early form of benchrest rifle) or muzzle loading target rifle, or a separate bullet and cartridge breech loader. The sheer weight and size of the die, and the air-tight precision of the hand fitted punches and die bore, make the PD-2 an interesting conversation piece. Practically speaking the die eliminates the need for a press in swaging precise lead bullets, with or without gas checks, half jackets, or base guards. The tip punch can be changed in length and shape to make a flat tip or a hollow cavity (it is held by means of a snap ring in the support base).

 

[Snidely70431]

I've been getting pretty good results swaging cores poured out of pure lead, not such good results using melted wheel weights. Besides being free, wheel weights seem to be more easily removed from my core molds. I decided I needed a press. Being too cheap to buy a commercial press, I made my own. It works fine for my purposes.

The top and bottom bearing pieces are 4"x4"x18" treated pine left over from some project. The upright pieces are 2"x4"x24". The bearing pieces are connected with 3" screws and 1/4" bolts. The bottom pieces a 2"x4"x12" and are connected to the uprights with 3" screws. A piece of 2"x1/4"x3" steel protects the upper bearing surface. Height adjustment is via scrap wood. Pressure is provide by a 1 ton hydraulic car jack from Harbor Freight "borrowed" from my wife's pickup. Out-of-pocket cost zip, since I already had everything I needed.