.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.