My Bullet Swaging Setup

I managed to obtain a bullet swaging setup.  It was an estate sale of parts a friend of my dad's inherited... but the guy doesn't reload at all!  The set was completely home-built by the guy's uncle.  He used discarded automotive parts like a cam shaft (presumably one with a worn cam), timing gears, and old valve stems (again, presumably from burnt valves).  I would guess he got all the raw tool steel for practically nothing from a salvage yard.  What yard would actually try to sell burned valve stems?  He may have gotten all of it for free!

Unfortunately he didn't leave any instructions with it, so I have spent some time sorting out all the parts. I still haven't sorted all of the .357 dies simply because he built so many of them.

The set has two HUGE home-built presses, and dies for .30 carbine, .44, .41/.40, .357/38, and 9mm. I have partial dies for 8mm as well. I say the 8mm is only a partial set because I think that was the core swaging apparatus.

It also came with:

A cannelure tool:

Core melting dies

A core sizer:

There are so many dies, that apparently some of them are for building swaged lead bullets.  I don't think many people do this simply because melting lead bullets is so easy to do.  And cheap.  Here's some of the .38 bullets he made that came with the set.

I've built an adapter to make my antique Herter's 12 gauge reloading die work with this setup. I'm working on additional dies for .223, 6mm, .45, and .458 (for .45-70).

In the future, I will look into .308 bullets as well as completing the 8mm set. If the .308 works out, then I will also look into .311 dies in case AK ammo dries up. That would cover every caliber I would shoot, besides 12 gauge.  Maybe I'll make jacketed slugs next!  :)

Not mine, but some other swaging apparatus and parts available on the 'net:

Copper tubing can be made into jackets and copper strip is used for drawn jackets. Copper tubing is known as UNS-C12200 or 122. Copper strip is called UNS-C11000 or 110. The best tubing to use is hard drawn, straight tubing while soft copper strip is most often used.

Gilding metal is the bullet maker’s metal of choice. Gilding Metal has between 94% to 96% copper, a trace of iron and lead, and the rest is zinc. Probably the most commonly used alloy is 95% copper and 5% zinc. It is known as alloy UNS-C21000 or 210. Gilding metal probably was named that because it was used as a substitute for gold and was used to coat or gild works of art.

It is available, it can be drawn easily, doesn’t corrode easily, it is a bit more expensive than pure copper but not excessively so. If annealed correctly bullets made with gilding metal jackets will expand well. And barrel fouling isn’t much of a problem. All in all it is the ideal material for bullet jackets.