Swaging - Anyone do it?

J

johnwilliamson062

Moderator
While looking at 45-70 info tonight in preperation for a much delayed trip to the range, I started thinking about lighter bullets. My understanding is lighter bullets don't work in 45-70 b/c they are not long enough. This got me thinking about lighter alloys. This lead me to copper of density about .75 that of lead with a melting point just short of 2000*F. Quite difficult for me to cast.

A long search later I was on Corbins web site looking at bullet swaging tools.

Has anyone tried it out?

Is this a way to get a lighter 45-70 bullet that will still shoot well?
 
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Swaging solid copper is beyond the capabilities of "hobby level" bullet swaging equipment.

You'll "pop" your $900 die in an instant, and have nothing to show for it. (And have to wait 12-36 months for the replacement, so that you have a complete set again.)


If you're talking about light alloy cores in a copper jacket, then that's a different matter. But, even then, most alternative alloys are still too hard for the equipment that's readily available to 'hobbyists'.


If you want 'easy' to make light bullets in .45-70, look into "bumping" handgun bullets (0.451"/0.452") up to .458".
Information is somewhat scarce, but your best resource will be the Cast Boolits forums (castboolits.gunloads.com).
 
swaging

I have a Corbin swaging press. As noted above, it is not intended to swage alloys or metals other than soft lead (and gilding metal or copper bullet jackets). I have swaged .452" 230 grain FMJs up to .458" and used them as pinker loads in a 45-70. They worked in that capacity. I never did accuracy testing with them and so have no idea about their longer range usefulness.

Swaging presses and dies are expensive. Unless you have some extra disposable income and a continuing use for swaging or just like to experiment... buy factory.
 
If you are looking to put together some general hunting and target practice bullets then you might as well purchase a mold and start to cast them yourself. It wil be far cheaper and the results will be hard to distinguish against even factory loaded rounds.

IF your interested in swaging your own do a search for "BTSniper" and you will find everything you need to put togehter some quality bullets. That said though it isn't cheap to get into as mentioned above. However most of what he produces can be done on a solid cast iron loading press. He uses annealed pistol brass for the jackets and ends up with some very handsome results which, from all accounts, seem to work as well as the factory couterparts.
 
There is another form of forming/swaging outside of reloading. I guess that means the other methods and or techniques will not work. If I decided to increase the diameter of a bullet and shorten it at the same time I would increase the diameter while making it shorter, and not tell anyone.

F. Guffey
 
and bump, I could call it 'bump the bullet up'.
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It is usually referred to as "bumping" because most guys that do so actually use cast bullet sizing equipment for the job.
Being casters, they're usually unaware of the terms used by bullet swagers.

It's also a process being performed on a completed projectile, not components that are being assembled to form a new projectile.
So, people like to differentiate a bit, and use different terminology.

It's still a bullet swaging operation - just one that's often done with bullet sizers, and often with cast bullets rather than jacketed.
 
It's also a process being performed on a completed projectile, not components that are being assembled to form a new projectile.
So, people like to differentiate a bit, and use different terminology.
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To me it would sound a bit awkward: 'I bumping' instead of 'I bump'. I also have a 'bump press', again , to me, it would seem a bit awkward to call it a 'bumping press'. I do have presses that do not bump.

F. Guffey
 
I have some casting equipment and have cast 12ga slugs before. I have not found a casting solution to the bullet with properties I want to try. I don't want to make it shorter or larger diameter. I want to make it lighter while maintaining an identical shape. A 325 grain projectile cast in lead would be about 250 grains in copper. A 405 grain drops to just over 300 grains. Maintaining the same aerodynamic shape, contact with lands, sectional density, etc.
But I might be wrong here. The pure copper rounds on the commercial market seem not to dip below the lead ones. I am not sure if they are using dimensions that would be 400+ in lead, alloying with something heavier, or I'm just wrong.

Swaging seems much simpler than casting.

I'm pretty ignorant about swaging. I have read a little about swaging air gun pellets in the past.
For the most part I took Corbin's sight at face value.
made of normal jacketed or unjacketed lead or powdered metals, can be swaged using the -S type dies and the CSP-1 S-press. Copper tubing is discussed at some point on the site. Maybe just in relation to jackets, but I believe for all copper bullets also.
$750 for the press then... Not sure. Seems to be more or less a nickel and dime you business plan.
They do indicate their lead times are much shorter than they used to be. Less than a year for custom dies and most things in less than 3 months now.

I'm not all that close to trying it out. I'd need to beg,borrow, or steal a CNC lathe to manufacture some test rounds out of copper stock. It may have to wait until I have regular access to a CNC machine for personal use. That could be a while. I've negotiated a great deal on a machine, but nowhere to put it with humidity controls.
 
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swage

I have the Corbin CSP-1 press.....a marvelous machine. All of my dies are for bullets in the .452" - 458".
I make bullets intended for paper patching in a 45-70. I have made half jacketed bullets for the .45-70 and for my 1911s.
Mostly, though, I use the press to reform bullets from one diameter and weight to another.
For indoor gallery matches with the 1911, I have developed a lightweight 170 grain LSWC that works nicely, I make these from factory
swaged .357 LHPs which are inexpensive. Another variation is a heavier LSWC for outdoor shooting....a friend have me a few thousand factory swaged 240 grain .430 cal. LHPs. As I have many jacketed bullets for my .44, I had no use for these lead .430s. So...I swaged them up to .452 and bled off 32 grains of weight to end up with a very useable 208 grain LSWC at .452"
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The copper disk is called a base guard and serves the save purpose as a gas check.
Pete
 
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I swage my own bullets, but only in .224 cal, mostly with RF jackets. I do know that experimenters in this caliber often use fillers like air-soft pellets to make full-length but lighter bullet. Perhaps something similar could be done with a .458 dia. But bullet "balance" may be an accuracy issue because of how the weight is distributed along the length of the bullet.

Would be interesting though....
 
I had forgotten about powder metals.
That might get you where you want to be. ...But it would be a frangible bullet, rather than an expanding bullet.
The same thing would come from a shot-filled bullet (like Glaser "Safety Slugs") - explosive expansion and fragmentation.

Even if you were okay with a frangible bullet, that's a really steep price to pay for an experiment. I'd say it would be a minimum of three dies, plus a press and materials. And you'd probably need an oven to sinter the powdered metal. So ...$2,500 or so, just to get your foot in the door?


Swaging seems much simpler than casting.
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It's all in how you look at the processes.
Swaging involves trying to keep everything impeccably clean and consistent, all the time.
Clean jackets. Clean cores. Clean dies. Clean punches. Consistent jackets. Consistent cores.
There's a lot of boiling, wiping, and weighing.
And, for many operations, you need to be working with annealed jackets.
For bonding, you are working with acids and ovens.

If you don't anneal, the jackets fold or crack.
If you don't keep things clean, the bullets are sub-par and/or you mess up your custom die (or two, or three).
And if you don't bond correctly, you make one heck of a mess (and bullets that are worthless).


In contrast, casting is more about maintaining alloys, managing heat, and figuring out what process creates the ideal bullet for X situation in Y gun with Z load. And then there are all of the messy lube processes... None of them are clean. Whether it's sticky Alox/X-lox, wax-based lubes, lard-based lubes, powder-coating, epoxy-coating, or something else, every process has at least one messy (or potentially messy) operation.


I "redneck swage"** and cast. Both have their places, and I believe they go hand-in-hand. But that's mostly due to my own preferences for jacketed bullets in some situations (or certain rifles) and cast bullets in other situations. ...And the fact that most of the cores for my swaged bullets start life in the casting pot.


**(My process has evolved a bit, I no longer do any bonding, and my last lot of bullets was made with lead wire - cut with a home-made core cutter. But the basic process and equipment in that thread still apply.)
 
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