O.k. - we have been talking about various items that we need to persue our hobby of swaging.....different modifications to dies, building presses, different types of presses. This group definately has the imagination to go in any direction and has the shooting background to do the R&D once the equipment has been made.
Seems to me the biggest difficulty we are having is the availability of good tooling, and to date, our solution has been: modify something currently in production until it works right, or, build something entirely from scratch by ourselves.
I think both of these options are workable, but neither is ideal - we are generally shooters, not machinists, although we do have several among us (not me) that are very experienced machinists.
The people who are doing the most here are the ones who are either machinists by trade, or have a dual hobby.
My idea is: why don't we enlist the help of some people who are as dedicated to machinist persuits as we are to shooting. If we could partner with some good hobby machinists, we could feed them projects, and get back custom tooling to use in our hobby. I've seen some of those 9x20 lathes turn out some pretty good stuff - Lathesmith is a perfect example. He makes outstanding stuff. He has recently upgraded his machinery, but I know that he started out making those Star dies on a 7x10 Harbor Freight or something.
I'm not suggesting that we take advantage of anyone here - just use each other's strengths to play off one another.
If a friend of yours came up to you today and said: I just bought a new pistol and I want to work up the best load possible for cast boolits, you would not hesitate, you would invite him over, work up the loads, do some shooting, charge him what it cost you (maybe) and chalk it up as a great afternoon!
Does anyone know of a forum that has a similar helpful attitude to Cast Boolits, and focus on hobby machining?
Well, just thinking......so if this is a stupid idea, just let the thread die off.
Chris