OK, I got an answer back from Corbin which I'll reprint as it is a wealth of knowledge. I believe Corbin wouldn't mind if more had this information. I'll be digesting this and thinking about if I want to pursue swaging.
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If you want to learn more about swaging, you can follow the link to
megabytes of information on our web site at...
http://www.corbins.com
Then, on the opening page, look at the box in the middle of the page that says "How to..."
and browse each of the suggested starting points, such as how to find information, how to swage bullets, how to make a kit...
These will get you started without flying off in all directions at once!
Basically, all you need to make bullets is this:
1. A press
2. A set of dies
3. Swage lube
4. Jackets or a way to make them, if you want to make jacketed bullets.
5. Lead wire and a core cutter, or a core mold for your own scrap lead
Some calibers and simple bullet styles can be made with a reloading press, but in every case, it is faster and easier to use an actual swaging press. For some designs, it just isn't cost effective to try to force a reloading press to do the high pressure, high precision work. A swaging press will usually make 3 times as many bullets per hour as a reloading press. The pages under
www.Corbins.com/presses.htm will explain exactly why this is so.
Calibers from .102 to .458 can be swaged using the CSP-1 S-Press. This is a good starting point for most swaging operations. Calibers larger than .458, or longer than 1.3 inches, need to start with the CSP-2 Mega Mite and -H type dies for it. The Mega Mite can also reload big calibers such as 50 BMG.
For almost any flat based bullet (open tip or FMJ, handgun or rifle) a FJFB-3-S die set is the right one to start with. This is a 3-die set. It has a core swage to adjust precise weight of core, a core seater to assemble the core into a jacket and expand the jacket, and a point form die to apply the ogive or nose curve.
For rebated boattail bases, just add the RBT-2-S rebated boattail add-on set, or look at any of the catalog numbers that have RB in them. For instance, a 5-die set called the FRBO-5-S just means five dies, type -S for the S press, that make Flat base, or Rebated Boattail, Open tip styles.
All of this is detailed under the various options of the "How to..." beginner's section as explained above.
The most commonly asked questions about bullet swaging are answered on our web site. If you would like detailed information -- a complete course in the art of bullet swaging -- you can send for our multi-media library of swaging (Cat.No. BP-7), for $69.50. The library covers the basics, most common questions, descriptions of all kinds of bullets and how to make them, commercial aspects of custom bullet making, power presses, hand presses, jacket making and exotic designs, survival and scrap
material conversion into bullets, and so much more! (Allow $13 S&H).
If you are interested in a quick study of swaging, just to find out if
it would be worth your while to look any further, you might want to get
the CD-ROM called Corbin Handbook of Bullet Swaging, No. 9, which is $9.50 (plus
$4.00 S&H). (This is included in the package).
The Corbin Handbook of Bullet Swaging gives you an overview of swaging,
tips and techniques for making many kinds of bullets from black powder
paper patch to rebated boattail ultra-low drag machine gun projectiles,
airgun pellets to shot-filled fragmenters, jacketed, lead, solid
copper...all kinds of bullets you've heard about and others no one
outside of the R&D at Corbin has every heard about! A whole section is
devoted to secrets of the industry, most of which have never been
previously aired in public, but which may shed a great deal of light on
subjects that will keep you from spending unnecessary money to support
myths and fictions about some of the components and tools you now
purchase.
Since precision is an inherent part of bullet swaging, a chapter is
devoted to explaining a major myth about measuring instruments,
including digital mikes, and the practical limits of precision (what
matters, what doesn't, and why in strument makers are misleading
general public buyers by implying far more than you get in many kinds
of measuring tools). Experiments with the bullet weight variations, and
how much really matters, as well as the source of variations and how
the cause is more important in some cases than the variation itself, is
spelled out. You can use this information even if you never swage a
bullet! It will affect your purchases and your thinking...for the
better!
For prices of all Corbin products, log onto:
http://www.corbins.com/prices.htm
or the Corbin on-line store at
www.SwageDies.com
Because of the thousands of letters and messages received asking
virtually the same things, we've written the answers in detail with
pictures and drawings to make them more clear. Just a brief touch on
some of the major queries follows:
Q. Can Corbin equipment swage hard lead bullets?
A. Yes, even solid copper -- using the right press and dies. Corbin builds swaging equipment to fit certain groups of capability. Harder lead is best swaged using type -H dies in the Mega-Mite hand press, Mega-Mite Hydraulic press, or Hydro-press. Reloading press type swage dies are limited to soft pure lead with or without jackets (above 357 caliber, no jacket but you can use the BaseGuard disk). Even solid copper or brass can be swaged using the correct dies and technique.
Q. What are the caliber limits?
A. There are none, provided you select the appropriate family of dies
(and the press into which they fit).
The most popular system is our CSP-1 (S-press) and type
-S dies. The -S dies handle .102 to .458 caliber with up to 1.3 inch bullet length.
The type -H dies that fit our MegaMite hand or hydraulic versions, or the CHP-1 Hydro-press, can handle anything from .172 to 20mm - even certain huge projectiles like the 4-bore (short and fat) that approach 1-inch cannon shell size.
Our presses can also be used for heavy duty reloading jobs.
The S-Press uses a 7/8-14 standard head thread, and comes with a free
RCBS-type button shell holder adapter to use your existing reloading
dies and shell holders.
The -H presses use a 1-1/2 inch by 12 thread head, standard for many
of the popular 50BMG and 20mm dies. Shell holder adapters come with the
presses, as well as 7/8-14 to 1-1/2 x 12 adapter bushings.
Q. Where do I get materials like lead and jackets?
A. You can get everything you need from Corbin, and there are hundreds
of suppliers for raw material such as lead and copper. Lead for the
cores can be cast from scrap material, extruded into wire using our
extruder dies in the hydraulic presses, or purchased in spools and
simply cut to length with a core cutter. Corbin makes both core moulds
and core cutters. The moulds use scrap or ingots, the cutters use
extruded lead wire. You can make the wire, or buy it. Corbin has all
the equipment to handle the production at whatever level you wish.
Jackets can be purchased in bags of 250 or 500, ready made, in some
cases. Some more exotic or unusual calibers you need to make yourself.
We furnish kits to make jackets from fired 22 cases, shotgun primers,
copper tubing, copper strip, and even solid copper rod. You can also
use our BaseGuard disks to eliminate the need for both hard lead and
lubricant or jackets in many instances (up to 1 400 fps). And of course
you can make any kind or style of bullet you can imagine.
Corbin publishes the World Directory of Custom Bullet Makers, which
also lists 200 sources of lead and 200 sources of copper jacket
material, including tubing and strip. This is available as a print book or as a CD-ROM e-Book.
Q. Can I make as good a bullet as I can buy?
A. If you make the ONLY the same quality as mass produced bullets, you
are doing something wrong!
The swaging equipment Corbin provides is identical to that used by
Olympic champions, International Shooting champions, defense and
security forces world wi de, the military R&D labs... in other words,
this is the most precise way known to make good bullets. It is capable
of vastly superior bullets to mass produced slugs, because every
single one is hand made by you, and you can inspect and adjust every
component that goes into the bullet, matching the length, weight and
diameter precisely to get the best results from your particular gun.
You don't have to compromise because of market pressure or the lowest
common denominator among buyers or even price of parts: if another
penny put toward better material gives you what you want, there is no
marketing department to tell you NO! You don't have to compete with
any other company for market share: you just have to please yourself.
If you want to try a different shape or weight or nose style or
construction, no one can stop you. And who knows? -may be it works
better than the common design sold to the average shooter on the mass
market! Over 350 custom bullet businesses using Corbin equipment have
found this to be true -- and are selling the results!
Q. How much does it cost to make a bullet?
A. From zero cents to thirty cents, in rough terms: depends entirely on
the material needed to make it. You can make free .224 and .243
bullets using fired .22 cases and scrap le ad that you pick up from the
range. You can make free 25 acp bullets from fired shotgun primer cups.
A typical benchrest quality bullet made with the best commercial jacket
available would cost about seven cents. A bonded core, partitioned,
rebated-boattail heavy-wall ultra-low drag .475 bullet might cost you
as much as twenty cents in materials, if you bought them all in small
quantity (copper tubing and lead wire, for instance). But to buy that
same bullet, you'd pay over $1.50 from one of the custom bullet firms
-- and chances are, you'd be making something they didn't even offer,
at any price! If you make a lead bullet, it costs no more than a cast
lead bullet. But it is usually 100 times more round and precise, 10
times more consistent in weight than the best cast bullets.
Q. Why is swaging more accurate than casting?
A. Split moulds open up and expose their 450+ degree interior surface
to room temperature air on every cast, which has to distort and warp
the hole slightly. They clang shut and cause slight misalignment as
there needs to be some tolerance in the pivots, and wear takes place
from the first time you use the mould. The split design of a mould
insures that you will always have some degree of wear, misalignment,
and out-of-roundness as a result of both temperature variation and
mechanical mis-alignment.
THE SWAGE DIE IS A DIAMOND-LAPPED CAVITY IN A SOLID CYLINDER: IT HAS NO
"HALVES" TO MISALIGN. SWAGED BULLETS ARE INHERENTLY MORE ROUND.
The mould temperature must vary from molten lead to solid lead on every
cast (or you'd pour out the bullet in liquid form!), which means the
size of the mould cavity constantly changes with temperature.
THE SWAGE DIE RUNS AT ROOM TEMPERATURE, NO HEAT APPLIED: IT STAYS AT A
CONSTANT DIAMETER. SWAGED BULLET ARE INHERENTLY CLOSER TO EACH OTHER IN
DIAMETER.
The cast bullet is compressed only by its own weight (one atmosphere of
pressure), which can leave voids and pits and air pockets inside.
THE SWAGED BULLET IS FORMED BY COLD-FLOWING LEAD WITH 2,000 OR MORE
ATMOSPHERES OF PRESSURE. AIR POCKETS AND VOIDS ARE ELIMINATED. THE
SWAGED BULLET IS INHERENTLY BETTER BALANCED.
The cast bullet can vary from one to another due to slight differences
in alloy because the lead, tin, and antimony can separate slightly as
you continue to mix and cast, resulting in different weights, diameters
and densities of bullets from one to the next.
WITH SWAGING, ONE BULLET IS PRECISELY LIKE THE NEXT. THERE IS NO CHANGE
IN ALLOY SINCE ALLOYS ARE NOT REQUIRED TO MAKE NON-FOULING SWAGED
BULLETS USING JACKETS, BASE-GUARDS, or GAS CHECKS. ALLOYS CAN BE USED
BUT THEY ARE FORMED COLD SO THEY CANNOT SEPARATE. SWAGED BULLETS ARE
INHERENTLY MORE CONSISTENT IN WEIGHT AND HARDNESS.
These are just a few reasons. There is an e-Book full of other reasons:
The Corbin Handbook of Bullet Swaging ($9.50) will explain in detail
precisely why swaging produces better bullets than casting. Virtually
every factory bullet is swaged. Virtually every benchrest winner uses
swaged bullets. (There can always be an exception: try to find it! Then
try to repeat it yourself! With swaging, you can make the same bullet
anyone else can make, or you can make better ones!)
Q. How do you put a jacket on a bullet?
A. You don't. You expand a jacket by putting an undersized lead core
into it, and then compressing the lead with a punch, so it flows like a
thick liquid. The lead transfers high pressure to the jacket from the
inside, and pushes the jacket into precise conformity with the inside
surface of a diamond-lapped die cavity. You actually MAKE the bullet
at that instant, you don't make a bullet out of lead and slip a jacket
over it! That is why the lead wire is always so much smaller than the
caliber (except for lead bullets). It has to fit inside the jacket, so
it must be at least twice the jacket wall thickness smaller than the
jacket diameter, which itself is always a few thousands smaller than
the caliber you will create. The die itself determines the bullet
diameter.
The pressure of pushing the lead core outward to fill and expand the
jacket, like a balloon skin, is what makes swaged jacketed bullets so
precise: the core cannot slip and turn inside the jacket because of
the tremendous gripping pressure of the jacket as it trys to spring
slightly back to original diameter.
When you draw down an existing bullet to smaller size, you can only
reduce it about .005 inches before the spring-back defeats you by
attempting to go the other direction (larger) when pressure is
released. This releases the grip on the core and lets the core fail to
spin with the jacket when rifling is engaged, resulting in poor
stabilization and poor accuracy. Swaging, which works by expanding the
diameter, tightens the grip of core and jacket. Drawing down makes the
jacket loose if it exceeds the elasticity of the jacket (.005-inches is
a good approximation for most jackets).
Q. Can I use my reloading press for swaging?
A. Yes, Corbin makes the Pro-Swage dies and other type -R dies for the
reloading press. Some weights, shapes, and calibers or styles are not
available for a reloading press. Most paper-patched or pistol bullets
with SWC shoulder (and almost any nose shape) can be made with the
Pro-Swage dies in your sturdy slotted ram 7/8-14 threaded reloader
(like an RCBS Rochchucker or Pacific MultiPower).
To find out which bullets are suitable for reloading presses, read the
Corbin Handbook of Swaging. It will explain in detail what kind of
bullets can be made without using an actual bullet swaging press (which
is far more precise, fast and powerful than any reloading regardless of
size, since a reloader needs 4 inch travel and a swage press can cut
that in half to 2 inches, doubling the power automatically with the
same lever system).
There are four other main features of swaging presses that make them
better choices than reloading presses, plus the fact that most swaging
dies are designed to work in a swaging press ram, not a reloading press
head, so gravity works with you instead of fighting you (as it would in
the reloading press).
Q. CAN I MAKE LEAD OR PAPER PATCHED BULLETS?
A. Sure. You can make ANY kind of bullet with swaging. For a lead bullet
just leave out the jacket! You can use the same equipment and dies as
for jacketed, but you can also use a more simplified version if all you
want is lead, gas check, Base Guard, paper-patch, or lubed/grooved or
knurled/lubed lead.
In any Corbin press, you can select the LSWC-1 type of die (not made for
a reloading press for technical reasons discussed in our books). This is
a straight cylinder kind of die fitted with top and bottom (nose and
base) punches on either end. It has bleed holes around the middle, at
120 degrees, to allow exact weight adjustment.
The drawback of the LSWC-1 die is that the nose cannot "flow" into the
shank smoothly...it has to be joined by a .015 or wider shoulder. If you a point forming die, using a
punch, it means the edge of the nose punch is zero thickness. Not a very
well engineered solution, is it? The edge of the punch will be under
20,000 psi or more as you try to pull it back, to eject, and of course the
paper-thin edge will be ripped off. Guess what? The tensile strength of
the hardened steel is such that you wind up with an edge of about .015
inch thickness! Only instead of being made perfectly concentric, it is
rough and broken. There's a good reason for the design of these dies.
Is this little shoulder a problem? Maybe a mental one. Millions of such
bullets are swaged and shot in high level competition every year, have
been for over 30 years, and so far the winners don't seem to mind the
shoulder very much at all!
What does it do that is negative? It adds a tiny amount of additional
drag to the bullet. If you are looking for absolutely the flattest
possible trajectory at 500 or 1000 yards, then go to a special PF-1-SC
die that has a semi-blind hole, bleed holes, and adjustable internal
punch that forms a sealed ogive-shaped chamber in the die. Then you
can 20,000 or more psi on the lead within this die, and wind up with a
bullet having no shoulder between ogive and shank. Drawback is that this
kind of die costs about 3 times as much as the LSWC-1 to make.
As with most things in swaging, you can have whatever you are willing to
pay for. If you think the little shoulder is a major disadvantage, by all
means get the die that eliminates it. If you don't mind it, save about 2/3
of the cost with the simple, versatile kind of die.
Weight is up to you with all these dies, within a broad range. Nose shape
is up to you, subject to custom tooling cost for special shapes (we have
to make reamers and laps to cut special shapes).
Paper patched bullets need to be made about .010 inches smaller than the
normal size for a lubricated lead bullet, so that a typical .458 rifle
would use about .448 (and you could use .002 inch thick paper patching).
If your paper is thinner, adjust the bullet accordingly. Here is a
formula that works great in 90% of the guns:
PP diameter = Jacketed diameter - (4 X paper thickness).
There is a detailed discussion of lead bullets at
www.Corbins.com/lead.htm
You can probably answer just about any question by studying this section
and also the one about bullet design.
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These questions and hundreds more are examined in great detail, with
illustrations and photos, in the Corbin Handbook No.9e and other Corbin
books.
Thanks again for your interest! If you would like to receive a large
package of printed information, price list, and color photos of Corbin
equipment, send $1 to Corbin, PO Box 2659, White City, OR 97503 USA.
Please note that you can download just about any information available
from Corbin, on our document server at
http://www.Swage.com and have
it instantly without cost.
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D.R. Corbin, President
Corbin Mfg & Supply, Inc.
PO Box 2659, 600 Industrial Circle, White City, OR 97503
