Interest in a jacket or lead wire GB?

[freakshow10mm]

I'm going to be buying some jackets and lead wire for my new swaging obsession. The jackets and lead wire will be purchased from CH4D, they have the cheapest prices I could find.

I'd have to check if we could get a discount for a decent buy. This would be more of a "split up" buy, so if someone only wants a few hundred jackets and such. I would like to get a 10# spool of wire and split 1K 40cal jackets.

Jacket prices are $47 for 9mm/357, $63 for 10mm, $74-78 for 44-45cal.

Lead wire is available in .250 (30-32cal), .312 (9mm/38cal), and .365 (44-45cal) diameters in both 10 and 50 pound spools. Ten pound spools are $22 and the 50 pound spools are $75. The 50 pound spools are not exact, but the price will be prorated to exact weight. ETA: Proper size for wire for 10mm should be ~.3375", but the .312 or .365 should work. I'll check when I order. The jackets are .015" thick, so double that plus .365 wire is .395 so it should bump up a little bit (.005" aint that much).

[creekwalker]

Sound's good to me FS, see if they can split bulk orders for shipment to different locations. If they will than a large enough bulk order is a great idea and I'm in.

cw

[freakshow10mm]

There's a guy on CB toting .195 lead wire for $2/lb plus shipping. I'm getting 20lbs off him.

[Frost]

How much less expensive it it to make your own jacketed bullets than it is to buy them. Per thousand...

[Anvil]

Now if you were doing a CAST CORE mould group buy then I'd be in.

[craig110]

How much less expensive it it to make your own jacketed bullets than it is to buy them. Per thousand...

Skipping the dies since they are a fixed cost, the per-jacket cost of making your own is just the raw copper tubing so your net cost depends upon your CRB ability. A couple of months ago I ran some quick numbers using commercially purchased tubing and to give you an idea, IIRC, .308 jackets for 210 grain bullets came out to about .10/each and .45-70 jackets for 400 grain bullets came out to about .35/each. At that time, similar .308 jackets could be bought for about .13/each, so the real savings would come from knowing the local scrap metal dealers and getting your tubing from them. Using the numbers from a few months ago and getting the tubing from a scrap dealer at 50% off, you'd save around 8 cents per jacket.

[Anvil]

Craig I spoke to Dave Corbin about plumbing copper tubing. He told me that there are different "grades" of tubing and that plumbing tubing produces bullets that are okay for short range hunting applications but folks needed HIS ordnance grade tubing to get accurate bullets. BS? I don't know.

[craig110]

Yes, there are multiple grades of tubing. I did a quick search to get some of the details and here is a nice chart showing the the tube sizes: http://www.sizes.com/materls/pipeCopper.htm. They do differ in the wall thickness, so I can imagine that some high-velocity rounds would need the thicker tubing. I understand that most jackets are in the .030 to .050 inch thickness.

What is strange about what Richard said to you, though, is that nowhere on his website does he mention anything about special "ordinance grade" of tubing being needed nor did he mention this to me when he and I spoke quite a bit in the fall. Also, a google search for "ordnance grade copper" returned no results, so I suspect he uses that phrase to mean the thicker walled tubing. The only mention of thickness I can find on his site concerns using cases to make jackets and how using a .22LR for .223 or .243, for example, is ok up to about 3,000 fps but beyond that the resulting thin jacket can be destroyed in flight.

ETA: I found what Richard was talking about. "Drawn Copper Tubing" has some advantages that he describes in his online book, chapter 6, about halfway through the chapter. (Sorry, the material isn't page numbered.)

[Frost]

I work for a large industrial plumbing / hvac contractor so copper tubing is going to be the free part. There are several grades of tubing we use soft roll copper and drawn copper.

I am interested in pistol bullets.
Would this be a viable alternative to casting?

[craig110]

I work for a large industrial plumbing / hvac contractor so copper tubing is going to be the free part. There are several grades of tubing we use soft roll copper and drawn copper.

I am interested in pistol bullets.
Would this be a viable alternative to casting?

It all depends on your definition of "viable." Swaging involves many more steps than does casting. With casting, once you melt the lead you pour the mould, open the mould to release the bullet, and later lube/size. Even counting the pouring and opening as two steps, in three steps you have a bullet ready to load. Swaging from copper tubes generally involves at least twice as many steps and, unlike with multiple cavity moulds where you can get 4 or even 6 bullets per pour/open set of steps, in swaging the steps are done individually for each bullet. When I was seriously looking into swaging, I was coming up with around 50 completed bullets per hour being a good long-term average when starting with tubing. With purchased jackets I was figuring on about 80 bullets per hour.

Now, is 50-80 bullets per hour good? It all depends what what you are doing with them. If you are selling them commercially at a decent per-bullet profit, 50-80 per hour can generate some cash. Making 50-80 jacketed bullets per hour just to avoid buying a lead-friendly Glock barrel, on the other hand, isn't something I'd want to do. (Besides, the cost of all the swaging dies would far exceed the pricetag of a lead-friendly barrel. :wink5: ) So, like many things, it depends on what you want to accomplish.

[Frost]

Already have a LW barrel for the Glock.
Casting is just not an alternative for me at this time.
Sounds like swaging might be just to time consuming.

[craig110]

Yes, if casting is not an alternative due to either time or the issues of handling lead, then I'm guessing that swaging would be out for you as well. One thing to note, though, is that if the issue is just dealing with lead (some folks with young children don't like doing this) you can swage solid brass/copper bullets. It would be more expensive per bullet for the raw brass rods, but it is a faster operation since it boils down to just cutting the rod and swaging the shape of the bullet instead of having to form copper jackets, cut and size a lead core, seat the core, shape the bullet, etc., etc.

[freakshow10mm]

Craig I spoke to Dave Corbin about plumbing copper tubing. He told me that there are different "grades" of tubing and that plumbing tubing produces bullets that are okay for short range hunting applications but folks needed HIS ordnance grade tubing to get accurate bullets. BS? I don't know.
Go to http://rceco.com/MN.asp?pg=RBSBook and download the chapter on Jacketed Bullets. There are different diameters and types of copper tubing. There is common plumbing tubing and there is the industrial tubing. The industrial stuff is pricier but is held to tighter tolerances than common plumbing tubing.


ETA: I found what Richard was talking about. "Drawn Copper Tubing" has some advantages that he describes in his online book, chapter 6, about halfway through the chapter. (Sorry, the material isn't page numbered.)
That's probably what he is talking about.

Frost, the time it takes is relatively fast, but is still slower than casting from a gang mold (4 cavities or more). Swaging is done like a single stage press. They are ran in batches. You first cut the lead cores to length. Then seat all the cores. Finally swage the bullet to form the shape.

The cost to get into swaging is about the same as a full on casting setup. You need a strong single stage press like the Rockchucker (a dedicated swaging press will run $200), a set of dies (for pistol they run $140), and then your lead wire, jackets, possible a core cutter ($50 or so). So if you use your Rockchucker press, you are in for about $200 or so plus whatever wire and jackets you buy.

The jacket prices I listed above are for pistol and are from CH4D. They are the lowest price I could find.

[freakshow10mm]

Creekwalker, do you have an idea of what you would like to get into? I could give them an idea of what we are looking at and see if they will break it up to ship.