Maillemaker
01-03-2013, 12:42 PM
I have been reading Dean Thomas' "Round Ball to Rimfire" books, and have been reading about how swaged bullets were made by machine using 3-part dies. The nose of the bullet was in a single-piece die, and the groved end of the bullet was a two-piece die.
I got to thinking about making swaged bullets, and wondered if one could cast a blank, and then use a traditional steel mold for casting, remove the core pin and replace the core pin (or use th ecore pin) as a ram to compress the cast blank inside the mold, thus using the mold as a die. Obviously the sprue plate would have to be replaced with a solid one.
Obviously you would need a press of some kind (Harbor Freight sells some cheapies that would probably due the trick) and a fixture to hold the die halves together (perhaps a beefy c-clamp?).
I've been contemplating this as swaged bullets were considered superior to cast bullets during the Civil War, no doubt because of superior consistency and lack of voids.
What do you think of this idea?
Steve
I got to thinking about making swaged bullets, and wondered if one could cast a blank, and then use a traditional steel mold for casting, remove the core pin and replace the core pin (or use th ecore pin) as a ram to compress the cast blank inside the mold, thus using the mold as a die. Obviously the sprue plate would have to be replaced with a solid one.
Obviously you would need a press of some kind (Harbor Freight sells some cheapies that would probably due the trick) and a fixture to hold the die halves together (perhaps a beefy c-clamp?).
I've been contemplating this as swaged bullets were considered superior to cast bullets during the Civil War, no doubt because of superior consistency and lack of voids.
What do you think of this idea?
Steve