Here is my first attempt at creating a few 75-grain .224 bullets. The plan was to use the 8S ogive. I used a 0.8000 long jacket. They averaged 15 grains, which gave me a core weight of 60 grains.
Cutting cores, the cut puts them at 62-63 grains.
Cut wire ready to make cores.
squashing the core blanks in the core swage.
The bleed off from making the cores.
Swaging the cores into the 0.800 jackets.
The swaged jackets and cores. At this point, I was beginning to think that I might have chosen too short a jacket.
The best of the results. I swaged these with the 8S ogive, but, as I mentioned, I'd chosen a jacket that was too small. Quite a bit of lead was squirted out the tip. I swapped out for the 8S lead tip die, but, it didn't work out well. These three are done with the 6S lead tip die. You can see the ogive change in the bullet.
For the 8S lead tip die to work, I'd need a shorter jacket or more lead in the core. A 0.750 jacket probably would have been better with these 60-grain cores. If I wanted an open-tip bullet, I'd probably need a 0.900 jacket.
Here are some other results. There are some 4S, 6S, 8S ogive examples in the groups. For the type of shooting I plan to do, I'm more interested in an open tip bullet, but if I happen to pick up a bolt gun I can see the value in the lead tip bullets.
Lessons learned. I'll need to research the ratio of jacket lengths and core weights to finished bullet weights a bit more. Die spacing is critical, but doesn't seem to be that difficult. If I'd not tried 4S, 6S, 8S, 4S LT, 6S LT, 8S LT dies I think I would have had more even results.
Ideally, I'm looking to make a 75-grain open tip, maybe 77. I'll keep at it, playing around until I find my go-to jacket and core weight combo.
