Telling me more about swaging bullets

[gokyo]

Does this mean you can put a copper jacket on your lead bullet?

If so Tell me more I want to do this really bad.

[AdamN]

You can put a jacket on the bullet but you dont have to. You can swage a pure lead bullet without a jacket.

Corbin comes to mind, plus a few othe companies sell stuff. Press, swage dies, jacket forming dies, all kinds of cool stuff.
Like casting or reloading its an entire hobby in itself

[creekwalker]

It's worth trying, I'm still learning but I'm having a lot of fun. As Adam said you can start out with a reloading press and swage dies designed for it. There are lots of things you can do with swaged bullets, in fact you can take a cast bullet and bump it up to another caliber for certain applications.

cw

[freakshow10mm]

www.corbins.com (http://www.corbins.com) The premier swaging supplier.
www.rceco.com/ (http://www.rceco.com/) The second swaging supplier. Him and the corbins guy are brothers.
http://www.ch4d.com/ Click on 'bullet' for swaging dies.

The RCE, LLC site is geared more towards the basic info. The Corbin site is everything from hobby to commerical setups. Corbin is probably the most thorough swaging information you will ever find on the Internet. Period.

[craig110]

Does this mean you can put a copper jacket on your lead bullet?

If so Tell me more I want to do this really bad.

I hate to be picky, but after you look at the various website whose pointers FS10 gave you, you'll see that swaging isn't really putting "a copper jacket on your lead bullet" but rather involves normally filling a bullet jacket with something, often lead but sometimes other heavy material such as tungsten powder, and then squeezing it into shape. (Sometimes, even, there is no separate core and the entire bullet is solid copper.) When lead is used for the bullet's core, something as simple as an appropriately sized piece of lead wire can be used. The process does not involve casting lead bullets - with all that that entails - and then encasing those in copper. Besides the result being the wrong size since the jacket adds a decent thickness to the core's diameter, the effort made to cast a proper lead bullet would be wasted.

In short, casting and swaging are very different techniques that only overlap a tiny big if instead of buying bulk lead wire and cutting it, the reloader chooses to cast their own lead wire. I suspect that most of the time, though, reloaders who want to make their own wire get a separate wire forming swage die that they can squeeze their lead through.

[freakshow10mm]

For most lead cores, lead wire is cheaper, easier to handle, and less time consuming. You will cut the lead wire to length and then swage it to uniform the weight.

You can cast the cores with a core mold, but it's a waste of time for small bullets. You can use cast bullets from smaller bullets to use as the cores sometimes. I just ordered a set of 10mm swaging dies and am experimenting with using 9mm cases for jackets.

I will can use a .32cal pure lead 93gr bullet as the core and seat in in the core with the Core Seating die and then form the bullet profile in the Swaging die. This will yield a bullet that weights about 114gr.

With bullet swaging you can make any bullet you can dream of.

flat base open tip or soft point
rebated boattail open tip or soft point
flat base hollow point
rebated base hollow point

You can fill the jacket with lead shot and make frangable bullets. You can use buckshot as a core. You can use rubber balls and make some bullets you can safely shoot in the basement.

You can use 22LR cases to make jackets for your AR15. The jacket forming die will run $60 and the bullet making dies will run $400.

The cost to get setup to swage one bullet for one caliber is the same as one would spend on a nice casting furnace, lubrisizer, mold, handles, lube, top punch, sizer die, mallet, PPE, thermometer, etc. With casting, you just need a mold, sizer die, and top punch to make a different caliber.

With swaging you need a whole different die set, which runs $400-$800+ depending on design. CH4D makes simple pistol dies that run about $130. I ordered a set of these. I'll post a review when I get some time to use them. I will be using my RC press for starters, but getting a swaging press soon.

Some bullets can be made using a strong reloading press like the RCBS (Rock Chucker Bullet Swaging) Rockchucker press. It is recommended for serious work to get a dedicated swaging press. I'm getting an RCE, LLC Sea Girt swaging press for $200.

A swaging press will have more leverage and less ram travel. The reloading press is built to have just enough leverage to resize a brass casing. It gives up leverage (power) for longer ram travel.

Short stroke= lots of power.
Long stroke= very little power.

[craig110]

With swaging you need a whole different die set, which runs $400-$800+ depending on design. CH4D makes simple pistol dies that run about $130. I ordered a set of these. I'll post a review when I get some time to use them. I will be using my RC press for starters, but getting a swaging press soon.


Please do post this review! (And I wouldn't mind PMs beforehand.) Swaging has fascinated me since I learned about it last year, but the pricetag of the Corbins or RCE dies kept me from dabbling in it. The CH4D's pricetag, on the other hand, is pretty nice if their stuff works well.

[freakshow10mm]

There's two types of CH4D dies, the #101 and #105. The #105 will only make half jacketed semi-wadcutters. The #101 will make 3/4 jacketed bullets of either soft point or hollow point configuration.

I ordered the #101 dies (2 die set) and they are about $137 shipped. The #105 die (single) is about $79 shipped. They can make you custom dies for a little over $200 or so. Check with them on limitations. I don't see any rifle dies listed but they might do them on the custom basis.

Corbin stuff is expensive, and RCE stuff isn't too far behind. RCE recently updated their website and removed the Reloading Press dies that had the easy designs like the .224 6S spitzer die set for ~$225.

I was planning to get the 22 jacket maker die ($60) and the above die set to make .224 bullets for my AR15. I have a print out of the old RCE website that lists the reloading press dies and prices. They had .224, .243, and .308 plus popular handgun (.312-.454) for $225. I'm going to check with RCE if they still make them. Would be a bummer if they didn't.

That would be the cheapest way to get into swaging. In reality, you are looking at a set of rifle dies costing $400 for a flat base open tip die set. Remember, it's an investment.

I'm also getting a Lachmiller 9mm swaging die set from a guy on CB for $38 shipped.:cornut:

I have a set of CH4D reloading dies for .256 Win Mag. They are very high quality. I have no doubts about their swaging dies.

[freakshow10mm]

Well to my surprise I just got the swaging dies in the mail from CH4D. I also got some 9mm cases in (thanks guys) and they are setting on a hot plate being annealed right now.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/freakshow10mm/Bullet%20Swaging/P3260001.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/freakshow10mm/Bullet%20Swaging/P3260002.jpg

They have been heating up for about five minutes now and when they are all discolored like these in the center of the pic, they are ready to be cooled and are essentially annealed. These are HOT. Use heavy gloves.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/freakshow10mm/Bullet%20Swaging/P3260001_01.jpg