made my own top punches

[rodgervich]

A while back I posted a question about lube on plain lead swaged pistol bullets. I went forward and got a simple die set from RCE Co. to make .44cal slugs, it was on clearance and bought it just to experiment with. Turned out to make good bullets that my Redhawk shoots very well! I've made short 185gr plinkers to load in .44 Special up to 280gr w/gas checks that sail way down to the end of the range. I lube them all in Alox and especially the gas checks don't lead at all, don't have chrony data but estimates from load manuals show them up to 1000 ft/s.
Anyway, it's been pretty cool to swage these bullets and last night I got a wild hair and decided to make my own top punch and experiment with different designs just to see if I could.
Have not shot any of these but made two punches with the same tool and here are the bullets I made. The short cone point is 160gr and the big HP is 205gr, both with gas checks and Alox is now drying. The cone point HP is about 1/16" diam and 1/8" deep, the big HP is 3/16" diam and 5/32" deep. The weights are randomly selected "looks about right" but within 1/2gr of each other. Just thought I'd share, maybe inspire someone to try something new for no good reason.

[The Old Redneck]

     I warned you that big bores would be addictive.

[Cat Whisperer]

So how much clearance did you have between the top punch and the die?  Any issues with flash?

Good looking job!

Pix of the tooling?

[rodgervich]

Hi Cat Whisperer, I read your post about making your own dies and punches AFTER I put this one up and realized we're doing about the same thing. I will get more pics and more explanation later this week but here is a pic of my top punch next to the RCE original top punch.
Mine came out about .001" under the original size but will have to mic it again to be sure. I get a very small amount of flash around the top edge, it is visible but it's not much and once the bullets are swished around in the Alox for a minute it disappears.
I'm using a Walnut Hill press and RCE simple lead bullet die. I'll get more pics and some dimensions for you to work with.
I thought this would be a good test run for a top punch, ended up with two and will probably make another for a wadcutter.
Now that this proved out I intend to make a die to swage bigger .475 lead bullets for my .480 Ruger. I will do a direct copy of the die set just with a bigger hole.

[rodgervich]

OK I measured my swaging die set and made a set of drawings. The hardness was actually measured on a Rockwell tester, the die body measured at 58 and the punches at 40, I took the liberty of putting the ranges on the drawings. I don't know what material the real ones are made from but I suspect any good tool steel (O1 or whatever) would make a set good enough to make several thousand bullets, especially if you use some lube.
This die set is designed to be used with a Walnut Hill Press by RCE Co., this die set was made by RCE Co. to fit their press and top punch holder. The top punch holder for this die set is a piece of 7/8-14 threaded rod about 4" long with a 1/4-28 hole tapped in one end.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/RMEngineering/make%20a%20die/leadbulletswagedie.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/RMEngineering/make%20a%20die/leadbullettoppunch.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/RMEngineering/make%20a%20die/leadbulletswageejector.jpg

[Cat Whisperer]

Rodger -

THANKS!  I detect some professional experience with drawings and CAD.

I've now got a swag-o-matic in .452 to play with.  The die parts are so closely matched that I cannot fit them together by hand - only in the press.  Haven't played with it yet to see how it works.

It looks like the s-o-m dies are designed VERY much like the ones you drew up in design.  Holding a thousandth clearance is certainly doable even on my old lathes.

I've got a small supply of A2 and can get it professionally hardened.

How did you go about doing the nose cavity?  One form tool or several?

[LUP]

How did you polish up the part of the punch that entered the die? I assume that the cut the rest of the punch on a lathe and then threaded the head of it. Anything else you did?

Thanks,

- Rob

[rodgervich]

I did some fooling around yesterday and made up a whole swage die to make .475" boolits for my .480 Ruger. The adjustable reamer used for the die body was giving me problems and the die came out at actual diameter of .4775", this is a little on the big side but I can't make the hole smaller so I'll just shoot a few and see what happens.
Catwhisperer, sorry for so long to reply here but here is a picture of the tool I used to make the .44 bullets previously and used for this top punch. This time I ran a 5/16" two flute endmill in to depth and chased the hole with this tool positioned as shown. This gave a lightly tapered side to the nose cone.
The tool is heavily relieved on the bottom and sides, it seems very delicate and I sweat while using it but so far it has proved to be tougher than I thought it would be. Maybe it helps that I baby it pretty good, cut very slowly and use lots of cutting oil.



On this die body I moved the bleed hole up 1/16" from the original RCE position to better work with gas checks (have to get some now!). The RCE die hole is positioned so the top of the gas check (Hornady) covers almost half the hole, I figured this location would make it easier to extrude the lead.
Here are some 340gr bullets I swaged this morning as a test, a 200gr .45 SWC is shown for comparison. I guess these would be considered a Wide Flat Point? I didn't do any real design, just sort of eyeballed the cutter and figured it would look good enough and come out the end of the barrel.
These big slugs burn through lead wire in a hurry!

[Cat Whisperer]

Rodger - THANKS!

Also thanks for the tip on the endmill.