Prelimanary Test show promise

[Dennis Eugene]

Finally got out and shot some of my first ever home swaged bullets. I made them using spent .40 S&W brass for jackets and pure soft lead for cores. They weighed in at 227 grains and I sized them down to .450 allowing for a 1 thousands spring back. I shot them through my Ruger SR1911 and they crossed the chrony at an average of around 885 FPS. They shot well fed well had zero problems, did not do any real work as far as accuracy goes but did get them on paper at 50 yrds and even managed to hit the 100 yrd gong. I did recover one from the 25 yrd burm and found another in the dirt at the 100 yrd gong. In the pics the bigger flatter one was recovered at 100 yrds and the smaller mushroom was from the 25 yrd burm. I included pics of the finished bullet and a loaded round in the pics just for comparison. Needless to say I am very happy and am looking forward to more testing. Oh yes the load was a tula LPP under 5.2 grains of bullseye in a R/P brass over all length of 1.210 well any way here's the pics hope you enjoy. Dennis

[andyt53]

Beautiful! I like the expansion, also like the notched bullets. The notching die from BT?

[Dennis Eugene]

Yes, BT Snipers works of art.

[IllinoisCoyoteHunter]

Great work! Please do tell us what you trimmed your jackets to and the weight of your cores. Thanks!

[BT Sniper]

Looks great Dennis! Nice job on the xtp! Bullets look perfect!

I imagine he trimmed to .725 and used a 158 grain core. That is usually how I advise the 45cal customers.

[oc1oc2]

I would like to learn how to do that. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[clodhopper]

Welcome to Cast boolits, your first post in the swaging forum, pretty good sign.
You are pointed in the right direction following this forum.
There are guys here who make their own bullet swaging dies and exchange ideas freely. There are also guys who make dies and sell them.
Keep reading it's a jungle!

[Plates5]

That is the best thing I have seen in boolitry. Truly cool.

[xman777]

Looks great Dennis! Nice job on the xtp! Bullets look perfect!

I imagine he trimmed to .725 and used a 158 grain core. That is usually how I advise the 45cal customers.

Thats exactly how I roll. I use a Magma Master Caster with a 158gr boolit, dead soft lead, and trim to .725 (ish) I run all the cases through the casemaster jr just in case its bulged, trim, bell, drop cores and anneal in kiln, then swage and finally size. Obviously clean between steps involving lube. Bullets come out at around 230gr +/- 3gr or so. They shoot as good as or better than the XTP's I've been buying for years. Can't beat that no matter how big a stick you got.
This may seem like a lot of steps, but realistically I can do 1000 rounds in a week without getting bored or tired.

[BT Sniper]

Yep! That sounds about right. When I was making a lot of bullets I could usually do about 250-300 a night including all the steps to finished bullet.

BT

[xman777]

An hour here.... An hour there... Oh look, I have lots of shiny things...
Life is good. BT, you make a great finished product. Thanks!

[Blackhawk Convertable]

Dennis, those look absolutely beautiful!!! So you are casting a 40 cal bullet and smushing it into the trimmed case?