Making Hollow Points with a drill press?

[Scrounger]

Apparently some of you guys don't realize Uncle Ray the Carpetmans avatar is a photo his great granddaughter! Missy will be 15 next October so keep that in mind. Buncha sickos....

Wrong!!! He had his favorite sheep on Oprah for a make-over. Now you know why he switched from camels...

[PatMarlin]

Does he sit on that saddle whilst watching Oprah? Where is that pic anyways?..

[Scrounger]

Does he sit on that saddle whilst watching Oprah? Where is that pic anyways?..

Here it is. He's much better these days, back on his Prozac...The other picture is how he is now after two years of that odd sheep fixation. Everytime I try to warn him against it, he just says," Flock ewe".

[PatMarlin]

Ewe... looks like there maybe a little lead poisoning going on there too Ray?..

[carpetman]

felix,you are correct---wheres Wills when you need him? This is getting more serious than Donald/Rosy. I heard that Rosy was a lesbian and I wasnt sure where Lesbia was,so I looked on a map. Never did find it--must be a small place,but I suspect overpopulated as there seems to be a lot of Lesbians around.

[carpetman]

Tpr Brett---You are correct, my avatar girll is jail bait. She accused me of rape. I was so elated that she may have fantasized about me in such a manner,I pled guilty. Judge gave me 30 days for perjury.

[Scrounger]

Tpr Brett---You are correct, my avatar girll is jail bait. She accused me of rape. I was so elated that she may have fantasized about me in such a manner,I pled guilty. Judge gave me 30 days for perjury.

Now I think Willy ought to give you 30 days for perjury too...

[Scrounger]

felix,you are correct---wheres Wills when you need him? This is getting more serious than Donald/Rosy. I heard that Rosy was a lesbian and I wasnt sure where Lesbia was,so I looked on a map. Never did find it--must be a small place,but I suspect overpopulated as there seems to be a lot of Lesbians around.

Lesbia is a small country completely surrounded by Texas. You know, "Way out west where men are men, and so are some of the women."

Or is that California????

[Scrounger]

You probably didn't want to know but... Lesbos is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. Seems I remember a story from 8th grade literature about all the women being shipped to this island for safekeeping during one of their many wars several thousand years ago.

[carpetman]

Scrounger---Lesbia can't be near Texas. I heard it is full of dikes and there just isn't enough water near here to justify that. Maybe you got it confused with Louisiana? They need more dikes,especially around New Orleans.

[felix]

Has to be in the Montrose area around RiceUniv, just north of the hospital district in Houston. ... felix

[Larry Gibson]

Ok....back to the question.......

My experience with cast HPs goes back to '68 with a 311410HP mould used in the .30 Carbine and a 311041HP for use in the 30-30 and .308 Win. I quickly found that normal alloys (WWs, Lyman #2 and Linotype) were poor expanders. Following the old writings of Keith and the articles in the NRA cast bullet book I made up softer alloys. In the early '70s I got the ForsterHP tool and began HPing handgun bullets also (356242, 358156, 410610, 429421 and 452490). I also used a Micheals (I think) bit for drill stocks for sling swivel studs to open up the HS made with the Forster bit. That made for a really wide mouthed tapered HP. Pure lead worked very well up through 900 fps with the PB bullets and with GC bullets up through 1100 fps. With magnum handgun loads up through 1400+ fps Keith's 1-16 tin/lead alloy gave very good accuracy and expansion. I've found with handgun bullets if you just cast WWs or harder alloy then HPing isn't much of a benifit. However if you want to really improve the terminal effectiveness of your bullets then changing to a more malleable alloy and HPing is a good way to do it.

With rifle bullets over 1600 fps I've found that Paco Kelly's use of WQ'd hard shot (3-5% antimony) alloy works very well up through 2100 fps and gives very good expansion with minimal sloughing. I have shortened the HP stem on the 311041HP and on the 323471HP moulds as both are GC and driven to 2100+ fps and this lessons sloughing. I left the stem full length in a 257283HP which casts a 80 gr PB bullet for my Savage 25-20. When cast of recovered .22LR lead and WQ'd from the mould they are accurate to 1400 fps and the HP gives explosive expansion on ground squirrels.

I mostly just buy multiple cavity moulds these days as they cast more bullets quicker and use the Forster HP tool to provide the few HPs I use for hunting. The 457483 in the Siamese Mauser is a good example; cast of WQ'd hard shot alloy the RN bullet is HP'd with the Forster to a depth of 3/8". Then the Micheals bit opens it up quite nicely. At 1783 fps the expansion is impressive and it is explosive at 2100 fps. That bullet cast of 1-30 tin/lead alloy at 1370 fps out of my H&R Officers Model TD expands very well in deer.

I am currently experimenting with the 429244 (GC bullet at 270 gr) HP'd for use in my Ruger FTBK .44. I'm going to cast them of 1-16 tin/lead alloy and recovered .22LR (WQ'd) and HP them. At 1400+ fps they should do quite well. I'm also going to try BruceB's double dip soft lead nose with them and compare to the HP'd bullets.

Larry Gibson

[LET-CA]

Ok....back to the question.......

My experience with cast HPs goes back to '68 with a 311410HP mould used in the .30 Carbine and a 311041HP for use in the 30-30 and .308 Win.
. . snip . .

At 1400+ fps they should do quite well. I'm also going to try BruceB's double dip soft lead nose with them and compare to the HP'd bullets.

Larry Gibson

This is great information! I really appreciate all the info from those of you who've done this before.

[Tedbytes]

I have been very successful making hollowpoints using my hobby lathe and 1/8 center drill or larger. One of my favorite 44 special bullets is Lyman 429451 255 gn lead plain base round nose. The small round meplat makes it difficult to start most drillbits using a drill press. I have used "as cast" 429451 chucked into the 3 jaw chuck of the lathe and locked in at the end of the drive bands closest to the nose. The center drill comes to a distinct taper for countersinking,but offers a visual stopping point for feeding your quill end and center drill. I will do several bullets,then weight them after this. This initial step usually removes about 10 grains of lead with a large entrance hole where the countersinking ledge has just been started. I weight all drilled bullets and fine-tune their weights using a 4mm hex drill bit in a small hand drill motor. I am able to produce excellent weight to weight with no perceptible deviance,perhaps .1-.2 grains. I then size and lube the drilled bullets. My low vel 44 special loads for a Charter Arms or level 1 44 special load under 13,000 psi using 6 unique makes this bullet an excellent heavy weight bullet that expands with pure lead. As cast weight of course will be smaller in diameter as opposed to an alloy using tin and antimony.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

You probably didn't want to know but... Lesbos is a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. Seems I remember a story from 8th grade literature about all the women being shipped to this island for safekeeping during one of their many wars several thousand years ago.

It is indeed, but the term arose solely because of the imagined orientation of the poetess Sappho who lived there and ran an academy for women. There is nothing clearly lesbian in her writings, or those of others anywhere near her lifetime, although there was no secret about Greek males of the time all being at it. Patrick O'Brian, author of "Master and Commander" etc., describes a possibly fictional evacuation of Lesbians during the Napoleonic Wars, in which I don't think anybody noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Back on the subject as someone said, nearly everybody overestimates how big a hollow I s advantageous on game. A fairly soft alloy is more important. Anything anywhere near as hard as linotype will break up as far back as the hollow goes. This can get you quite seriously and irreversibly killed by dangerous game, as the extremely fast thimble-shaped bullets of the first Express rifles did in any alloy. It may do as much good as harm on deer-sized animals, albeit with a bit more meat damage than usual.

The hollow has to be very concentric with the rest of the bullet. Is there a stronger word than "very"? I do not like the idea of a wooden or roughly drilled holder for the bullet. I think you could do well with a simple reamed die, and pistons, one pointed and one flat, pressed in from either end in a vice. This is my drawing, but it would be better with enlarged ends so that the pistons can always be pressed in to exactly the same point, possibly with shims to suit different bullet weights.

[mdi]

Is this a record for resurrecting a thread? Eleven years?...

[BAGTIC]

felix,you are correct---wheres Wills when you need him? This is getting more serious than Donald/Rosy. I heard that Rosy was a lesbian and I wasnt sure where Lesbia was,so I looked on a map. Never did find it--must be a small place,but I suspect overpopulated as there seems to be a lot of Lesbians around.

Look again. It is called Lesbos.

[Smoke4320]

Look again. It is called Lesbos.

and winter is coming

[Grmps]

I saw this video on youtube where the guy clamped a tubing clamp/flaring tool on a drill press.... really slick. The only downside is haveing to find my flaring tool that I have not used in 30+ years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdbAvgMxlEw

[Spector]

I chucked up a drill bit and put a piece of hardwood in the machine vice on my drill press. I drilled a hole in the wood and un-chucked the drill bit and forced it into the hole in the wood. Then I lightly chucked boolits in the drill press preferring to spin the boolit rather than the drill bit. There was some variation in the finished weights. I bought some center drills at Harbor Freight to use the next time I try it. Once I got them done I ran them through the sizer. The biggest issue I saw is getting each hollow drilled to exactly the same depth.

It just seemed to me that spinning the boolit would aid in concentricity.

Mike.