.he Corbin Handbook & Catalog No. 7, Introduction, Page #
INTRODUCTION TO BULLET SWAGING
I'm Dave Corbin, and I'd like to be your guide on a trip you won't
soon forget: a safari to the ultimate levels of handloading, where the
final control over your firearm's performance -- the design and
construction of the bullet itself -- is totally in your hands. This is
the awesome power of bullet swaging.
What is bullet swaging? It is so simple that one sentence
describes the process. Yet, it is so powerful that more than seven
books are in print today, crammed with experiments, techniques, new
ideas that swaging makes possible. Research keeps adding to those
bulging files every day.
Technically, bullet swaging is the manufacture of bullets using
high pressure to cold-flow metals at room temperature, inside a
precision die and punch set. You merely put a piece of lead (or other
flowable materials) into a high-pressure die, squeeze it by inserting a
precisely-matched punch (driven by a press), and the lead flows like
putty to take on the exact dimensions of the die cavity.
The die must be extremely strong and remarkably well-finished for
this process to work. Bullet swaging is done at pressures that often
exceed those of a typical rifle chamber! Yet, even under thousands of
pounds of internal pressure, the die cannot change its size or shape.
The level of precision required for these hand-made, diamond-lapped
dies is measured in the millionths of an inch. Only a handful of die-
makers have ever existed who could produce the quality required.
There are dies to make semi-wadcutter pistol bullets, boattail
rifle bullets, partitioned, hollow-pointed, cup based, spitzer rifle
bullets, and anything else you might imagine! All the dies operate on
the same simple principle: an undersized piece of material is expanded
outward in diameter by high pressure, at room temperature, until it is
stopped by taking on the exact form of the die cavity.
We'll cover technical details in a minute. But there is something
beyond all this that describes what swaging really means. More than
just the technical power it places in your hands, swaging reaches out
to capture the imagination of people in all walks of life, and becomes
something far greater.
Bullet swaging, to a rapidly growing number of people, is
financial security. The famous Corbin HYDRO-PRESS system, now in use
around the world by nearly all custom bullet makers, makes it simple to
offer highly-advanced designs of bullets that cannot be economically
produced by the mass-marketing firms. Corbin has developed the tools,
the techniques, even the marketing expertise, to the point where the
average person interested in a second income or a new career can afford
to operate a successful bullet manufacturing operation from his home.
The custom bullet maker of today has huge advantages over the
founders of major bullet firms of the past. Knowing what to make and
how to sell it is part of the advantage. Having standard manufacturing
systems, methods, and expertise as close as a phone call or letter is a
major leap over the hurdles Speer, Hornady, and Sierra had to face.
You don't have to start from scratch and design not only the bullet but
also the tools to manufacture it. It has all been done for you. There
are at least seven books at this writing to tell you how to take
advantage of these years of experience!
Corbin publishes the WORLD DIRECTORY of CUSTOM BULLET MAKERS. It
is the source-book for writers, experimenters, procurement officers in
military and police headquarters, defense contractors, and advanced
handloaders in at least nine countries. Your own brand of bullet can
be listed, along with your address, just for the asking. Advertising
space is available for a very reasonable cost. Reaching the world with
your custom bullets is no longer a major challenge.
By keeping in close contact with our commercial customers and
working with them on exotic design variations and tooling, Corbin has
been able to help insure a healthy market, prevent unnecessary and
wasteful duplication of efforts, and see that the real needs of
shooters are met with constant new developments in the field of custom
bullets. Every individual, like yourself, who decides to offer a
small-scale supply of some special product is just one more guarantee
against quality bullets ever being swept out of reach.
During major wars, economic upheavals, or bouts of mis-guided
legislative fervor, it is the small-scale, wide-spread producers who
stand strongest against shortages. It is much less likely that
thousands of smaller operators will be forced to cease operations than
the chance that three or four major outfits can be shut down! Most of
the major firms have other interests to protect and are very visible,
vunerable, and sensitive to pressures that would not affect the home
operation.
You don't need to sell bullets to get a pleasant feeling of
security in owning a quality set of swaging dies. Many people find
that the lower cost of making your own bullets lets them enjoy far more
shooting, with less drain on the family finances. And the equipment is
always there, waiting, if you should want to make a little money on the
side. Friends, club members, local gunshops -- all provide a
convenient market for certain specialty bullets that the factories do
not offer.
Because bullet swaging is so fast and easy to do, you can produce
enough bullets in a weekend to help cover your own shooting costs. The
"make a few, sell a few" approach serves vast numbers of shooters. You
need only to obtain your Class 1 and Class 6 Federal Firearms Licenses,
neither of which is expensive or difficult. Write to your regional
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms for forms. Note that you ONLY
need the licenses if you plan to SELL the bullets: you need NO license
to buy equipment and make them for your own use.
For many people, selling bullets is not important. The real
thrill of swaging to them is seeing their ideas come alive in solid
metal. What hunter hasn't dreamed of some improvement, some better
construction, different weight, or modified style of bullet that would
fill a specific need -- and yet, it just isn't offered by any of the
mass production firms?
Sitting around the campfire with the remains of a spent bullet
that utterly failed to do the job brings wistful thoughts of making
something better. The tools of swaging turn these thoughts into
reality with lightning swiftness. Versatility is one of the major
advantages of swaging, along with speed. The equipment doesn't have to
cost any more than the messy, dangerous hot lead casting equipment with
which you are undoubtedly familiar. Yet the same investment in swaging
tools can make literally hundreds of different bullets!
Changes in weight are entirely up to you. In five minutes, you
can use the same dies to make whole bench-top covered with different
bullet weights. The dies don't care how much material you put into
them, within a broad limit. They faithfully reproduce the diameter to
a precision impossible with any hot lead process, operating at a
constant room temperature instead of changing from molten to solid lead
temperature on every bullet made. The lightest weight and heaviest
weight a certain die can make are normally beyond the limits of what
you would want to shoot.
With a cast bullet, you buy a certain mould for a certain weight,
shape, and style of bullet. You are limited to various forms of lead.
If you want a different weight, or style, you have to buy a new mould.
And you spend half an hour waiting for a lead pot to melt the metal,
cast several times to get the mould up to temperature, sort through the
bad casts and rejects, clean the whole mess up after it has time to
cool down to safe levels, and THEN, when all that is done, you have to
start all over again and run each of the remaining good bullets through
a sizer and lubricator tool, with the mess of greasy lube and the
chance of getting too much or too little application.
The bullet you get from casting is limited in velocity because the
lead will melt in contact with the bore of your gun and the hot powder
gas if you try to drive it too fast. The performance is limited
because if you try to use harder alloys and reduce the leading of your
barrel, the bullets no longer expand or hold together as well. Using a
copper gas check on the base of the bullet is a small step in the right
direction, but it isn't nearly enough for full performance.
With a swaged bullet, you can use any alloy that you might use for
casting (depending on the particular system and dies -- anything from
pure lead to solid brass rod can be swaged on the right equipment).
The dies make a wide range of weights without further expense to you,
and the range can usually be extended even further with simple punch
changes. The styles you can make are virtually unlimited. There is
nothing commercially produced today or at any time in the past that you
cannot make at home, and make it more accurately at the same time! It
all depends on the particular kind of equipment you get.
Bullet swaging equipmenmt quickly demonstrates to you that it
saves you money over casting, when you begin making different weights
and styles. If all you want is one weight and style to be shot at a
velocity of perhaps 1,200 fps or less, and that one style can be
nothing more than a lubricated piece of lead, swaging may have little
to offer you except speed and safety. If you are looking only at the
cost per bullet, there is no difference. What you pay for lead to cast
bullets is what you would pay for the lead to swage the same bullet.
If, on the other hand, you are interested in making the bullet to
tolerances that can't be approached with hot lead -- repeatability of
less than 0.0001 inches -- and you want a system that can give you
weight tolerances so small a normal scale barely registers them, then
even this one simple cast lead bullet might take a second seat to its
swaged cousin. In our own experiments, we have found that group sizes
of .308 caliber cast bullets could be cut in half at 100 yards simply
by running the same cast bullets through the final point forming die of
a .308 bullet swage outfit.
In some calibers -- not all, mind you! -- you can make absolutely
FREE bullets for the rest of your life by using materials others throw
away! Do you shoot a .224 or a .243 caliber rifle or handgun? Do you
shoot a .25 ACP once in a while (which you might shoot more if the ammo
wasn't so costly) or a .257 rifle? In these calibers, it is possible
to make bullets using fired shotgun primers, spent .22 cases, and
recovered range lead.
All the materials you need to keep yourself shooting for the rest
of your life are lying on the ground by your feet, when you go to the
target range. Those empty .22 long rifle cases make excellent quality
.22 centerfire bullets. The empty .22 Magnums and Stingers make
reasonable quality .257 and 6mm bullets. Fired shotgun primers turn
into acceptable .25 ACP bullets.
In the .224 caliber (all modern .22 centerfires use a .224"
bullet), the quality of bullet you can make from a fired rimfire .22
case and scrap lead is as good or better than you can purchase for
$6.50 a box! The material is actually easier on the bore than standard
thicker jacketed bullets, shoots well enough that matches are won with
the bullets (although it isn't a recommended benchrest bullet by any
means!), and is so explosive that you seldom get a ricochet when
varmint hunting.
Bullet swaging can be profitable, and it is versatile, economical,
and enjoyable. It has the advantage of the highest possible precision
in bullet making, on the order of ten times better than lathe turning
the bullets. The pressure of more than 2,000 atmospheres in a typical
swage die contrasts sharply to the pressure of slightly over one
atmosphere typical of casting a bullet, compacting the lead and
squeezing bubbles and voids into oblivion. The cost of the equipment
always SEEMS high to a beginner, because (1) he is starting from
scratch and usually needs all the basics at once and (2) he doesn't
realize yet how much power he is getting for those dollars.
In the final analysis, swaging is far lower in cost than any other
method of bullet making, except in the one instance where a single
weight and style of lead bullet is all you want, and a mould exists
that will make it. As soon as you start experimenting, swaging begins
to prove its economy. As to the cost of the bullets themselves, the
range starts at zero cost -- remember the rimfire cases! -- and goes up
from there depending on the material you choose. It is quite possible
to make swaged bullets that cost more than a roughly similar style of
factory bullet. In fact, if you only want to duplicate a factory
bullet with no thought of making something better, then quite often
swaging won't justify its cost unless you shoot quite a bit.
The casual shooter who goes through one or two boxes of some
caliber a year has no real need for swaging equipment. It would take
far too long for him to amortize its cost, and besides, he might be
able to find some bullet that costs just about the same as the
materials he would have to purchase to make it! In general, a swaged
jacketed rifle or handgun bullet costs about half that of a similar
factory bullet, but there are some exceptions. And many people make
high performance bullets, using heavy copper or brass tubing jackets,
or other exotic constructions, with swaging's ultra-high precision,
that cost several times as much as a run-of-the-mill factory bullet in
the same caliber. But they are getting something that cannot be
obtained anywhere else, at any price: a premium bullet made exactly to
their order.
You can see that economy can be a good reason for swaging, but it
isn't necessarily the best or only reason, and in some cases there are
over-riding needs that make cost per bullet relatively unimportant. If
you want to shoot a fine double-rifle and simply cannot find any
suitable weight or even caliber of bullets for it, what does it matter
that your own custom-built bullets might wind up costing you fifteen or
twenty cents each? On the market, they'd be easily worth a dollar or
more in some of these calibers.! That, in fact, is one of the secrets
of being a successful commercial bullet maker: picking a product to
make that does indeed command a price higher than standard mass-
produced bullets, but which is so unique and valuable to those who want
it that they are glad to see you offer it at almost any price.
If, for example, you are affluent enough to afford to travel to
Africa or the Far East for big game hunting, you certainly are not
going to worry about the cost of a few boxes of bullets. The important
thing is whether or not they will work correctly, reliably, when that
big trophy is in your sights at last. It could mean life or death if
you are facing a charging Cape Buffalo. Anyone who has been there and
experienced a bullet failure at such a time -- and has lived through it
-- isn't likely to quibble over the price of bullets. Perhaps you can
begin to see why there are so many successful custom bullet makers in
the world today, making bullets that sell as fast as they can be
produced, for over $1 each and in some cases as much as $2.50 per
bullet!
"OK", you say,"bullet swaging sounds like it's got a lot going for
it. But how hard is it to learn? Is it going to take me the rest of
my life to figure out?"
Have you ever dug a post hole? Filled a pipe with tobacco? Both
those operations are good allegories for swaging. When you put a post
into a post hole, you tamp earth back around the hole. When you fill a
pipe, you tamp tobacco into the bowl. In a very crude way, this is
what it takes to learn to start swaging: press the material into a
hole or cavity, so it takes on the shape of the cavity. The die
corresponds to the pipe bowl or the sides of the post hole. Your
tamping stick or thumb corresponds to the punch in a swage die.
There are a lot of variations on this process, and a number of
different dies made to form certain shapes on the bullet, but
basically, every swaging operation is filling a hole with material by
pushing an undersized piece of material into the hole with a punch. The
end of the punch forms one end of the bullet. The die walls form the
sides of the bullet. There is another punch, held captive in the die
assembly, that blocks off the other end of the die, and is used to push
the bullet back out the die mouth when you are finished.
A lead bullet takes one stroke to finish. A semi-wadcutter takes
from one to two dies (one stroke per die) depending on how fancy you
want to get with the weight control. A rifle bullet or a handgun
bullet made with the jacket wrapped over the ogive (nose portion)
requires either two or three dies (one stroke per die, again) to finish
the projectile. Whether it takes two or three dies depends on whether
or not you want to swage the lead slug that makes up the filling, or
core, by itself first. You can insert the core into the jacket (the
skin of the bullet) with or without first swaging the core. Either way
makes a reasonably good bullet. Swaging the core first makes the
weight variation extremely small.
We'll get into the details later. But that is really all there is
to learn in order to get started. You can be making your own bullets
within a few minutes after you get the dies. And you can be learning
to make ever better ones fifty years later! It's a little bit like
learning to shoot: you can start hitting the target the first day you
get your new rifle, and then you start working on getting 10's, and
never quit working on getting all X's. The bullets you can make right
away will probably be equal quality to what you can buy off the shelf.
But why stop with that? Swaging is capable of giving you so much more.
You may not have any desire, at this time, to make exotic bullets.
You may not want to extrude your own lead wire, or produce heavy copper
or brass jackets yourself, or form partitions and liquid-filled
internal cavities in your projectiles. You may not want to make a high
performance 12 gauge shotgun slug, or a solid copper .14 caliber
bullet, or a rebated boattail .500 caliber slug. The tools are
available, if you do. Knowing what is possible can be as important as
doing it.
The same copper tubing that runs air conditioners, nuclear power
plants, automobiles, and apartment buildings can be turned into
excellent quality jackets. The same lead that is used for roofing,
plumbing, x-ray shielding, and nuclear medicine containers is capable
of supplying you with an endless quantity of cores. Until you place
the lead core into the jacket and swage that bullet in the privacy of
your home, nothing about your supplies is unique to bullet making. The
materials are all around you.
The bullets you can make in times of serious economnic upheaval or
a great national disaster might well be worth more than their weight in
gold. Survival weapons don't shoot gold coins. It's hard to make
change with a couple of investment grade diamonds when you are
bartering for medicine or food. And cast bullets tend to foul the gas
ports of automatics and gas-operated military rifles. It isn't radical
to consider, at least, the potential for barter and the value that your
bullet-making ability might have in such circumstances.
"Sounds interesting. What's next?", you may be asking. The first
step was obtaining this manual. It will give you a wide view of the
field of swaging and show you what kinds of equipment are available
today. There isn't room to describe every possible trick and
technique, nor to go into the details of a commercial business, nor to
really give you an intense course in the art of swaging. Those subjects
are found the seven books Corbin has published over the past twenty
years.
Before jumping in, you should read at least the textbook
"REDISCOVER SWAGING". This should be read primarily as a course in the
art of swaging and not with a great deal of attention to the specific
machines or tools described, since the principles are the same but the
products may change over the years. If your interest leans toward the
commercial aspects, then by all means read "POWER SWAGING" as well.
Greater detail on a wide range of specific subjects can be found in the
three volumes of the Corbin Technical Bulletins. And the ancient
"BULLET SWAGE MANUAL" gives a different writer's viewpoint from an age
gone by.
With the information at your fingertips, you have a tremendous
advantage over the handloader of the past -- as well as the founders of
the big bullet factories of today! Corbin has brought swaging out of
the dark, mysterious realm of the die-maker and turned it over to you:
one of the most powerful tools ever devised for advancing the art of
handloading is placed in your hands.
In August, 1984, Corbin opened the world's largest bullet die-
works, in a new plant built just for this purpose. Located at 600
Industrial Circle, White City, Oregon, on a 44,000 square foot site,
the entire plant features electronically cleaned and filtered air,
climate control for both offices and machine shop, and a six-inch thick
barrier on both ceiling and walls to insulate the shop from temperature
changes. Brilliant shadowless lighting and spacious workroom give
Corbin's die-makers remarkable conditions for testing and inspection of
their work, even as it is being produced.
The Corbin facility is unique: no other firm has ever poured so
much time, effort, and capital into the development of bullet swaging.
If some of the things you read here seem completely different from the
general public's impression of swaging, there's a good reason for it!
Most of the limitations and problems with swaging in the past were
simply waiting for someone to find the solutions.
Swaging itself has few limitations. It is a quantum leap over the
usual "cookbook" kind of reloading. Swaging releases you from the
limits of mere repetition of what others have done. Instead of forcing
you to follow recipes in a reloading kitchen, swaging turns your
handloading bench into a laboratory where new knowledge can be
developed.
At any point, you could be holding in your hand the prototype of a
design that could change the future of shooting. And yet, at the same
time, you can immediately begin producing bullets "as good as factory
ones", and likely, a great deal better! No matter how routine a bullet
you may wish to make right now, it's hard to resist the temptation to
nudge the throttle a bit on the powerful design machinery, and try
something a little better. The spirit of invention is far from dead in
most of us.
At the moment when you first hold the gleaming perfection in your
own hand, which only seconds before was empty copper and dull lead, you
may sense the presence of other eyes looking over your shoulder.
Perhaps, if you turn quickly enough, you may catch a fading glimpse of
the spirit of the ancient founders of the swaging art: men like Harvey
Donaldson, who swaged some of the first .22 caliber jacketed bullets
from fired .22 cases -- a trick you can handle much more easily with a
simple kit, today. Behind him, you might see a long line of
experimenters, slug-gun shooters with their Carver pound-dies in one
hand -- the men who first began the process of shaping lead bullets in
swage dies, to advance the art of accurate shooting beyond anything
that had been done before.
Whatever work you might do, whatever ideas you might explore, you
have just as much potential as they did to advance the whole art of
shooting into a new generation. When you place your hand on the
powerful leverage of swaging equipment, you are stepping far beyond the
experiences of even the most knowledgable handloader who has never
tried this remarkable field.
Men with forty or fifty years of handloading experience express
wonder at the vast new horizon swaging lays before them. It's a
feeling all of us, from the dim beginnings to this day, can appreciate.
It's the feeling of pride that comes, when you realize that your own
bullets -- your ideas and experiments turned into reality -- are
building on the solid foundation built by the greatest experimenters
shooting has ever known. If you could catch that glimpse in the fading
light, I'm sure you'd notice each of them nodding their approval.