swaged copper jacket bullets in a whitworth?

[Gary/CO]

I'm getting into swaging. Has anyone ever fired a swaged copper jacketed 451 bullet out of a repro-whitworth or am I going where no man has gone before?

[medic302]

as a long range whitworth shooter and bullet swager, i can tell you that while i applaud your curiosity it won't work. unless you are swaging a hex bullet a copper jacketed cylindrical bullet will not be able to obturate into the hex bore of the rifle which will of course lead to massive gas blowby and loss of velocity etc. myself and others have found that the hardest alloy to use for shooting cylindrical bullets for a whitworth is 40-1. if you are shooting hex bullets then you can shoot as hard an alloy as you would like since there is nearly no obturation required to shoot accurately.

all that being said, you won't gain any advantage from shooting a jacketed bullet anyway from a whitworth or any other long range muzzleloader.

[Southron Sr.]

I have done a lot of bullet swaging and I have no doubt that you can swage a SUPERIOR Whitworth bullet out of lead. I found out long ago that if you precisely cut your lead cores so they come out weighing the same, and then leave the core in the swage a few minutes in the fully extended position of the ram, allowing ALL the "weep" to seep out of the dies, your bullets will come out weighing exactly the same! That makes "Match Bullets."

I would also recommend putting a small hollow point in the nose of your swaged bullets when you have the swaging dies made up.

Another option to consider is to have a swage made up that will allow you make a bullet with a hollow nose that is covered over by lead, like the later marks of the Snider Bullets.

GOOD LUCK!

Let us know how your swaged bullets shoot.

[Southron Sr.]

When I first started swaging Pritchett Balls the die maker told me that I had to lube every core before putting it in the die to swage it into a bullet. He sold me one of those "inking pads" like you use to "ink" rubber stamps and a bottle of lanolin as "lube."

So, following his directions, I poured some of the lanolin on the ink pad and then carefully rolled every core over it before I put it in the swaging die. What I quickly found out was that shortly I had TOO MUCH lube in my die and my bullets were coming out with "Hydraulic Dimples" in the nose area. Then I had to stop swaging and clean out the lube from the swaging die.

What I do now is to place a hundred or so cores on a tray and then spray them lightly with that kitchen "No Stick" spray, "PAM" that cooks use to spray down frying pans before they start cooking to keep the food from sticking in the frying pan! This is 1000% faster than lubing EVERY CORE by hand and works better than using lanolin.