I picked up .430 and .375 swaging dies, one teensy weensy problem

[DsGrouse]

Think of it like reloading, you do the steps in batches.

My kind of shooting, with a can, big heavy subs, hard cast, gas checked and powder coated all foul up the suppressor. So, jacketed is my rout to go.

At a factory price of .90 to 1.50 per bullet versus 16 to 23 cents for swaged

[DsGrouse]

Five shots with my 375 Win lever action using my 250-grain swaged bullets.

The fifth shot is lower left. I pulled it. The first is upper left, the second upper right top hole, the third lower right bottom hole, the fourth upper right bottom hole.

Not a bad group from my sample bullets.



I did learn that 2.620 is single feed only. So, I've a few bullets I need to shoot up. Other than that, most of the 50 I fired shot well. Fairly consistent across the OAL and Powder variations. It's now down to swaging, case/jacket prep, and producing uniform swaged bullets.

[DsGrouse]

40sw brass drawn down to .375 jackets.

I cleaned the dirt off in the ultrasonic. Next up is the tumbler. Then a rinse in the ultrasonic again.

At that point, they are ready for swaging
I'm planning on a passel of 240 soft points followed by some 255 grain flat points.

[DsGrouse]

I lost all the update posts. Here is a repost.

Here's the process for making .375 bullets using drawn-down 40SW brass as jackets. First, you need your annealed 40SW brass that you've drawn down to a .375 jacket.



The brass generally varied from 66 grains to 74 grains. I used number 9 shot to even out all the brass to at least 70 grains.


Next, you need your swaged cored. These are 170.2 grains. I swaged them from .250 99% lead wire using lanolin lube. I washed the lube off with hot soapy water.


Here is the core swaged into a sample jacket. It takes a bit of fiddling with the die to get the seat just right.



Next up is point form die. This set utilizes a P4S point form die. I've plans to trim up the end of the bullet to make it a flat P4FP.

All trimmed up.




I also used a BT sniper btx star crimp die on 50 of them just to see how they would turn out. After using the star crimp die you insert the bullet into the point form die to form the point.



Here's the BTX crimp die bullets after trimming up the sprue.

[DsGrouse]

As I mentioned a while back, I want to be able to test my swaged bullets. That process has taken some time. The first bullets I wanted to test are .375 win / 38-55 swaged 240 grn flat points. I had two options: an unskived 240grn P4FP and a 240grn P4FP with Skives at the tip of the bullet.



So, I ordered a couple of blocks of clear ballistics 10% gel and made a sled for holding the blocks. I made a box to keep the blocks in. I did so because I'm trying to keep the blocks as clean as possible. Hence, leaving them in the cardboard and closing the lid on the box. Now, does that affect how the bullets perform? I'm unsure about that. I'm not a big proponent of the ballistic gel wound channel. I've yet to see any deer with any kind of spiral wound channel. What I am looking for is consistent bullet expansion. If I get that, I am satisfied, especially since I am the one who swaged these bullets.



Rifle in question, Ruger made Marlin 336 30-30 rebored into 375 Win by JES rebore with a Griffin Bushwacker 36.


The first bullets up were the 240-grain non-skived P4FP. I did my best to stagger the height of the bullet impact.


The view of the spiral wound channels. IMHO, these spiral channels in ballistics gel are pretty much a useless indicator of bullet performance.


Found one of the jackets. All of the unskived bullet jackets were separated from the cores.


The second jacket.

[DsGrouse]

Bits of jacket and cores in the first and second block.



The second set of swaged bullets is 240-grain skived P4FP bullets. This time, it moved the box that held the clear ballistics gel.


All three rounds ended up 1/3rd the way in the first block I shot. All three also kept their cores. I also think the bullets, jackets, and cores penetrated further than the previously unskived bullets that lost their jackets. All six bullets were loaded with 31 grains of benchmark seated to the same depth.

[DsGrouse]

To even out the weight differenced between jackets, I added a few pellets of number 9 shot when needed. You can see a few of the pellets here.


Bits of jacket.


Here are the six bullets. The three skived bullets retained their cores.




The only unskived bullet to retain its core in some form.

[DsGrouse]

Here are some closer shots.

[DsGrouse]

Here is my substack article write up...
https://open.substack.com/pub/evandesha ... d&r=1k0ilr