Using a traditional mold to make swaged bullets?

[Maillemaker]

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

[Southron Sr.]

Dear Steve:

I have been swaging lead bullets off and on for 40 years now and first of all, there is no way that a Lyman mould (which is made out of soft, Meehanite Iron) could handle the pressures involved in swaging lead bullets.

Inside of a swaging die, when a lead bullet is being formed, the pressures are very high indeed, probably somewhere above 60,000 PSI. I was reminded of that one night when I had a steel swaging die fail during the upstroke (swaging) cycle of my press. The "CRACK" of the die failing sounded like a 30-30 Rifle going off. Flying shrapnel from the die flew everywhere in my shop, but fortunately missed me. Several pieces did hit the underside of my tin roof and dented it badly.

My press is made by Corbin-but his dies are designed for modern bullets and cannot be modified to swage bullets with grease grooves.

You can Google the Corbin website and see what is available.

Good Luck.