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Post by missionary on Mar 13, 2019 15:20:16 GMT -7
Good afternoon
Have an 1892 Winchester in 44 WCF made in 1907 that has a very fat lead area and had a wallered out muzzle. Even .430 jacketed things would spray hither and yon. Good area coverage !
So chopped off 1 inch at the muzzle. Patterns shrunk to 5-6 inches at 25 yards. Slugs were still obviously tilting upon ignition even with near pure lead and case full of 3F !
One day I was looking at the "cut off" barrel end and bingo ! Why not place a soft cast bullet base first into that old muzzle then with the bullet nose on our anvil smack the base with a well fitted brass rod to expand the nose to the wallered out old muzzle diameter. Took a little trial and error routine to get the "wack force" right but it worked.
Fat noses shoot much better. 25 yard groups are easily hand held to under 2 inches. 50 yard groups are under 4 inches which is easily minute of wild dog or rabbit.
Tried one time to "bump up the diameter" of some caliber 30 slugs to .318 (fat diameter Krag) and ended up breaking the handle on my Lyman 450. A welder and some flat steel pieces cured the handle. A fat mold and line type filled out the rest.
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Post by Bullshop on Mar 13, 2019 16:35:22 GMT -7
In situations requiring custom fit abnormally larger or smaller than standard the most flexible, handy and user friendly service I have ever used is the on line custom bullet design program designed by Dan Lynch at Mountain Molds. There are several custom mold makers but no other allows the user to design their own bullet within the parameters of the program.
The program has built in safeties that limit problem areas in design such as unsupported nose length and max length for twist rate. The program has allowed me to design some excellent shooting bullets that are one of a kind and only available from The Bullshop to customers.
Swaging is a great way to make good quality bullets of both lead alloy and jacketed type but the tooling has become prohibitively expensive. I started in swaging nearly 40 years ago with a kit from Corbin's for swaging on a loading press. The kit in .224" caliber included a jacket maker die for making jackets from 22 RF brass, a core mold, core swage, core seat, and open tip 6-s ogive point form die. Over the years this kit produced many thousands of fair quality bullets.
At some point to improve quality I upgraded to the Corbin M system which was the first dedicated swaging press Corbin offered. The M or Mighty Mite press is a horizontal mounted press with open top work window. Mine is the third and final improved design of the M press. After the M system they went to the vertical which I tried but did not like so went back to the M press
I have had my system of 4 M presses for a long time as there is no way I could afford to buy them now. I am set up in three calibers, 22, 24, and 30 to make plain base or boat tail open tip or lead tip in these calibers.
I also have quite a stash of commercial Sierra bullet jackets that I bought many years ago. The cost of commercial bullet jackets today is also prohibitively expensive and in limited supply. Sierra has limited runs of the calibers I swage but the cost for just the J-4 jackets is about what you can buy bulk bullets for from Remington and Winchester.
Having the equipment and supplies it is something I would like to do more of but I can barely keep up with casting orders so swaging gets little attention. I am Lord willing looking at retirement from the business in one more year may then have time to just play with the tools for my own enjoyment. Lord willing and time will tell.
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Post by missionary on Mar 15, 2019 8:19:44 GMT -7
Good morning Dan
I go to Mountain Molds off and on to see what they have "on the shelf". I once looked at the "design your own" feature and realized from Peru trying to remember exact diameters was not going to be a great idea.
You obviously know about the "real" swaging and not my informal wacking a slug just to get something usable. I do understand the cost involved of the equipment. Off and on individuals offer used dies for sale and it makes me shudder. When I see a real good deal on jacket stuff I am inclined to buy some. But in the last 10 years when up north there I shoot so little of them we probably have a life time supply. Lead just seems to do all we will ever need done.
Actually our recurve bows get more used by me bumping around the river bottoms for hunting eating critters . Looking real hard at a crossbow as the shoulders and arms no longer seem to like even a 55# draw weight. 45# seems so much easier but is the bottom limit by law for corn crunchers generally. 55# for me is cutting it close over 15 yards.
Retire... We are talking about that down here. Nearing 69 and living at 8000 and doing village work higher up is getting to be an effort. The place I shoot at is 10,800 and just going for slow walks looking around the bushes is about all that I enjoy. I would not want to run much up there or have to drag out a 200 pound corn cruncher very far.
Well you did it ! Your addition here in swaging makes it look lagitiment. From bashing to the real science of metal forming.
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Post by Bullshop on Mar 15, 2019 21:11:34 GMT -7
Well to be honest I too have used a chunk of over sized barrel with a close fitting punch with hollowed out tip to bump up cast bullets. I once had a Peruvian Mauser police carbine in 7x57 that had such a grossly over size bore it would tumble factory ammo with the original type 175gn RN jacketed bullets. I wanted to quickly see if there was any hope for it and possibly to have a custom mold made for it. I used a short section of 7mm barrel from a Rem Roller in 7x57 that was pretty well rotted out as a die and crudely crafted the punch. A couple whacks with a hammer on a pre lube 7mm cast bullet and I had a custom fit. It worked after a fashion but the bullets were majorly ugly. It did however give very nearly acceptable accuracy.
I decided that rather than keeping the carbine and getting a mold the better idea was to dump it. Apparently those South American police carbines are quite collectable and the buyer was not interested in the least weather it shot good or not. Collectors, ya got to love um !
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