Found this video. Don't know if it's been posted before.
I have seen his viseo previously, there are many steps to form the bullets, then there are cost of dies and materials needed not to mention his time. I have found cast bullets to be a better and more cost efficent process. With proper bullet fit and quality lube they can be driven at almost the same speeds as same weight jacketed bullets in pistol calibers, especially if they were gas checked.
;D
Like The_Shadow, I haven't really seen the value of swaging pistol bullets. Cast works fine for about any application I can think of. Fit is the key to no leading, which many novices seem to miss.
Quote from: sqlbullet on December 03 2012 08:52:22 AM MST
Fit is the key to no leading, which many novices seem to miss.
Since you brought it up ;D...........I've always used 0.001 over bore size in six guns. Lately I've seen a few articles that mentioned going larger. Just asking for your opinion.
For the 10mm guns many work well with 0.4010", those with tighter chambers may have feeding issues with bullets much larger. However 0.4015" and 0.4020" can povided better performance and accuracy. Finding the bore size by slugging helps to determine best fit, slugging the chamber and throat can also yield some useful info. Most semiautos have shallow grooves as compared to say revolvers. As the bullet enters the free bore truing cone, gases can by pass the bullet fro a breif period, this is where lube can be blown off as the bullet is trying to seal the bore, therefore the quality of lubes work their magic to stay put. The bullet tries to move straight into the rifling thus the bullets hardness comes into play as the rifling grabs the bullet to impart the spin. If the bullet slides too much it can shave off some lead and deposit it along the rifling. "LEADING"!
Most of mine are sized to 0.4015" as sized in the Star sizer, my Storm Lake 40S&W barrel has a tight chamber and I have to take great care getting them to feed properly.
I don't cast, either. I just found the video kind of interesting. The only practical advantage I can see is in making a very heavy, controlled expansion bullet like the 240 gr partition he mentions.
EdMC, as is always the case with reloading and casting, you gotta ask your gun what it likes. There was a pretty good article in Handloader a few years back by Mike V. in which he explored the "bigger is better" side of cast bullets. He found about what you would expect. That is, each gun was a little different. But he found in general that much over about .002" over bore rarely improved anything, often wasn't as good, and frequently caused chambering issues.
I size all my 10mm bullets .402". My Witness bores slug out at .4005" and my Glock at about .401". .402" doesn't cause any chambering problems in any of my guns and provides adequate results in all of them, including my Para with its .399" bore.
Raggedyman, The_Shadow and I both find we can control expansion all we want with hollowpoint molds and varying the lead alloy. I can make a bullet that fragments, mushrooms perfectly or barely deforms depending on what alloy I use and what hardening treatment it gets.
And, I can buy a bunch of custom molds for the price of a set of swaging dies and either a swaging press or the hardware to convert my existing press to a swage.
Placing gas checks on bullets is another way to keep the bullet from being eroded by some powders, I like what Yondering and others were doing with the FreeCheck system (cutting disk from soda cans and forming gas checks to be used on the bullets base). I will study to make some of these to test out.
Thanks Sqbullet & Shadow. I've just used .001 in my Ruger 45 w/o slugging the bore. A friend does some casting and has offered to help me. Bought a RCBS mold some time back but haven't tried it yet. Maybe when he gets his cataracts fixed. :o
EdMc, the Ruger 45 Blackhawks are why I started casting. After a lot of different molds; I've concluded the best, and the only two I needed, are the Lee 250 RF and the Lee 300 WFNGC. The 250 is great for plinking, and the most accurate in all the Blackhawks I've shot, compared to a bunch of other Lyman & RCBS molds in that weight range. The 300 is just about ideal for a 45 Colt hunting bullet. A possible third choice, just because it works so well, is the Lyman 330gr HP for the 45/70, #457122.
I set up my Blackhawks so the cylinder throats were .0015-.002" larger than the bore, and sized the bullets for a slip fit in the throats (basically .001-.0015" larger than the bore). This always worked pretty well.
Be aware the forcing cone dimensions and condition matter a lot more than you would think though. The best accuracy improvement I made in my last blackhawk was setting the barrel back 2 turns and minimizing cylinder gap. This made the forcing cone shorter, which improved accuracy and reduced leading. I was surprised at the difference.
Did you recut the forcing cone to a different angle.? I've seen that mentioned before on Ruger forums.
I did not. I was going to, but thought I'd try it first, and with the accuracy improvement, decided not to touch it. I had lapped the barrel a few years earlier though, which smoothed out the rough factory cut in the forcing cone.
I use a set of BTsniper one step swaging dies to make 180 gr 10mm/40cal bullets from empty 9mm cases. here is my video on it. i use a homemade press and can turn out
about 100 bullets an hour.
SW
Does that 100 bullets an hour rate include the time to cast or cut the cores?