Joshua
Taco Aficionado/Salish Sea Pirate/Part-Time Dragon
If I had to give the above photo a caption it would be “Not even close, but I learned a few things.”
This one would be “Getting closer, but not there yet.”
The goal is to make a swaged bullet for my 40 S&W using only reloading dies and Lee sizing dies. A few people have done this successfully.
I just bought a mold from Brad to make the cores. A Lyman 356402. I haven’t cast with it yet. But it came with two bullets in the cavities, so I got excited and started with them.
I annealed a handful of 9mm brass. These will be the jackets.
I shaped a 16 penny nail head with a file and a hand drill for a temporary ejector. As a more permanent solution I will be boring out the center of the decapping pin bushing and making an ejector pin with a hollow point tip when my lathe shows up.
I was gonna use a 220 Swift die as the only swaging die. By itself it was crumpling the brass at the nose. So I tried a 30-30 sizing die as a point forming die because of the shallower shoulder angle. Then final swaging was done in the 220 swift die.
It’s raining today so I couldn’t cast any cores, so I started making cores out of some 30cal rejects, with bolt cutters. That didn’t work because I wasn’t getting enough diameter.
Then I tried a few powder coated Lyman 358477. These will be two heavy too shoot but by using them I figured out how to get a decent looking nose and the proper pre sizing diameter.
Ran all these through a Lee .401” sizing die. They mic at .4015”. Now my gun slugs at a generous .402”. I’m still a little nervous about trying to shoot these at that large a diameter. I know that a few of you have fallen down this rabbit hole and will most likely have some advice regarding final sizing.
Josh