Dillon powder funnel & expander

[Brad]

I hate to be outdone......

Made me one from O1 tonight. First time using O1, sure does polish up nice.

Made one for 9 mm. The taper that expands the neck is a bit off, needs to be a shallower angle but not much. I wanted .355, I got .352. Need to leave more metal for final polishing.

This was a good learning experience. I was quite pleased with the outcome. Will load some ammo soon using the new funnel and see how it works.

 

[Cherokee]

Looks good to me Brad. That did polish up real nice. Better to have a little too much flare than not enough. You did that in one evening - it took me 3 days off and on to make mine. The next one I do I plan on a smaller M step and putting a mouth flaring taper on it. Its satisfying to be able to make something useful. Let me know how yours works out.

 

[Brad]

Bad thing is that now I see a need for a small heat treat oven. The idea of being able to make something like this then heat treat it for wear resistance is nice. I could use O1 for Star dies too, they would never wear out.

Dang, now I need a heat treat furnace and a mill. My wife is gonna kill me.

 

[Cherokee]

And the beat goes on...and on...and on.......

 

[Ben]

Looks like Brad is turning into a pretty good machinist ! !

Very nice work.

Ben

 

[Cherokee]

I loaded 50 of 38 Special with the new funnel and then shot them. Loading was fine, m-step expansion allowed easy placing of the bullet straight, powder flowed like it should. At the range, the ammo functioned fine. Guess its GTG, but I will make another funnel with a .355 - .356 body.

 

[Pistolero]

Brad,

Our local "Metal by the Foot" outlet has round bars of 4140 at good prices.
It machines very nicely in the cold rolled condition that they supply it in.
It may wear well enough as is in the CR condition.

You do some cheapo heat treating with it if you have access to an acetylene
torch. Heat to yellow hot and oil quench and you should have about Rockwell
C 57 at the surface to 55 at the center of a 1/2" rod. 1" rod cools slower, so
expect 55 on the surface and 50 in the center. If you want to temper it (probably not needed),
you can get some useful reduction in brittleness at 500F, available in an ordinary home
oven. At that temper, expect about Rc 53 or so but over 45% elongation at failure,
quite far from brittle (zero elongation at failure). Even without tempering, elongation
to failure is about 40%, not brittle at all. Cheap, easily machined and fairly
hard when heat treated in the "educated guess" method. Do realize that you will
get a lot of scaling in the heat treating, so leave a least a few thousandths on critical
dimensioned surfaces to polish off the scale and get your final dimension. Rc 57 is
pretty hard, and even 53 should wear a very long time in Dillon expander service,
possibly harder than the Dillon OEM stuff.

Here is their web site: http://www.metalbythefoot.com/

One foot of 0.625" diameter 4140 round bar is $2.97

Bill

 

[oldatheart]

Brad I have a heat treat oven. Your welcome to stop by and throw them in there.

 

[Brad]

I may just need to make up a few more and come visit you.

 

[fiver]

if you leave them a little rough [220 grit] I bet that they will pick up enough brass to fill in the rough spots.
brass has a lubricating quality all it own.

 

[Cherokee]

That's a good thought Fiver, but, after loading 1,000 rounds I haven't seen the effort smoothe out; I still have to pull up hard on the 650 handle to extract the expander from the case.

 

[smokeywolf]

if you leave them a little rough [220 grit] I bet that they will pick up enough brass to fill in the rough spots.
brass has a lubricating quality all it own.

The brass that is abraded by the high spots and migrates into the low spots, because of the difference in hardness, will never keep the steel high spots from continuing to gall and abrade your cases.
There is no substitute for as high a finish as one can possibly and practically produce.