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Does this seem like a perfectly good waste of 9mm brass?


Chills1994

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I kind of liked the bullets he was making. I wonder how they will shoot. I can think of reasons for doing it, kind of like TW and the lucky 11, because he can! It took me a year of shooting steel jacketed ammo, probably around 8-9K of Czech sub-gun ammo, to wear out a stock HiPower barrel. I guess YMMV quite a bit.

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There was a member of my club, 20 years ago, who was a machinist that had made a set of dies to do just that. He was a silhouette shooter and found that his bullets were better than the cast that he was using.

He retired about 18 years ago, lives in Florida for the winter, and shoots there, and still forms his bullets from 9mm cases.

The club, at that time was the RCMP training facility and 9mm was there for the picking. I'm still using that brass.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Apparently the 9mm into 40 cal bullets can be done with a Rock Chucker press and CH4D Swage dies that are available for about $130. You need to anneal the 9mm brass to make it more prone to forming as a jacket, and use pure lead since it needs to be soft enough to no over-pressure the dies and the press. He has said in other threads on that forum that he reccomends the Rock Chucker or the Lee Cast Iron presses over the one he shows in that video.. It's just what he had at the time. Interesting concept just the same.. I personally shoot cast lead, but it gives me an option to make jacketed for a lower price than they are currently being sold for.. Always good to have options..

Edited by sargenv
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I have been following the swaging threads over on that forum and this specific thing (9mm cased .40 bullets) intrigued me. I got a set of the dies from C4HD and have been messing around with them.

I held my tounge on this thread will everyone making fun of the guy for doing this. I think everyone needs to remember that there are different ways to look at this. We look at it as stupid because we think of shooting thousands of bullets and could never see doing this to keep us shooting. It is obvious that this guy is not a competition shooter as he doesn't even own a .40 pistol. The only pistol he owns is an original .44 Auto Mag believe it or not. For him, this seems to be more about accomplishing something rathen than producing bullets. I personally am playing with this because I see it as a way to make some nice heavy jacketed bulltes to shoot out of my 10mm's.

One last thing for those who think this guy is nuts. There are lots of people out there who think we are totally crazy for reloading ammo when you can go out and buy it. Just because you can buy great bullets from Montana Gold doesn't mean this guy is stupid for making his own.

Neal in AZ

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  • 4 weeks later...

I too have been following on the other Forums and it is an interesting process. I still have not read a report of anyone actually shooting these bullets to any extent. He is also working on 44 mag bullets using 40 brass. From what I've read, you must anneal the brass to get it to swage properly and the actual lead bullet you use as a core must be of soft lead. I guess if you can make acceptable .40 bullets for $25/K it is worth the hassle of swaging...it looks to be faster and cleaner than casting your own bullets.

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Actually, you need cast the cores (125 RN @ .356") but that is easy enough with pure lead or you can cut cores with lead wire of some type. I traded a 1st generation Rock Chucker for a Herters 1.25" ram single stage just for this kind of thing.. the Swage die is en route within about a month or so. My thoughts about using 9mm brass would be to follow all the open shooters who shoot 9 major who basically leave their brass behind after firing it once. Most people just do not reload 9mm major more than a couple times..

I will likely still use lead for my revo's but still, it's nice to try something different.. :) This whole casting/swaging is just another extension of reloading and shooting for me.. and time.. well, I see to have an ample amount of that that I spend on the internet and watching tv.. I may as well be usefull with some of that spare time :)

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I posted in the other Forums and wondered about using shot as core material to avoid having to cast. I think someone has tried it. Reclaimed shot can usually be had at skeet clubs for a good price. Who knows? :cheers:

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I was browsing through the "Things you've overheard at the gun shop" thread earlier. Someone was recounting how they were looking for components to load some self defense rounds. The shop owner told him that he should never do this since you can't load a reliable round. To which the customer replied "No, YOU can't load a reliable round" and left. I'm seeing a parallel here.

I'm not saying anything about the ability of this particular guy to make his own bullets but I am a firm believer of doing it one's self. I'm dangerously close to going off on a rant here but I'm fed up with the "leave it to the experts" line that I've heard too many times. With enough know how, good tools and good information there is no reason you shouldn't be able to make something that can match or exceed commercially made products. That's where so much innovation comes from.

Now this may or may not be a cost effective way of producing bullets but along the way this guy learned a little something about metallurgy, holding tolerances and ballistics. That's worth something in my opinion.

Sorry for the rant. :blush:

Just my luck some idiot is going to see this, get inspired and blow his hand off. :wacko: *Sigh* Ok, make SURE you KNOW what you are doing otherwise it's best to leave it to the experts. :)

Edited by JasonV
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Well... I um.. took the bait... so to speak.. I already have had a Rock Chucker press for a bit over 20 years. I mainly use a Dillon 650 for production though.

He offered the swage die setup for $100 shipped.. so I figured.. it's not that much and if it doesn't work out, there are several people on that other forum that want it.. so I got one.. And to the gent who said wasting 9mm brass should be discouraged I say this.. there are many many 9 major shooters who buy once fired and leave it lay after they fire it.. it's cheap and relatively plentiful.. add in that there is sometimes 9mm berdan brass and I say send all of it you have to me so I can actually use it and not have someone scrap it and sell it overseas. The brass does not need be deprimed. This is a great use for all that a-merc that everyone scraps ;)

That being said.. I ran off a number of these this evening.. and they look pretty good. I didn't bother sorting the brass by brand but think that if I did, they will seat the core to different depths.. you can see in the picture below that the cores have different heights. The one copper colored one that is just higher than the end of the brass was WCC brass, obviously thicker brass and less room inside. The reason some are copper looking is that I have a plentiful supply of 124 gr plated bullets that never shot well for me and this is one way to use them up. Otherwise I'll be using scrap lead to cast the cores and do like that gent did..

All in all I'm out $100 since I already had the bench and press. It did not take long to make these and I could likely make about a thousand in an evening if I did the prep ahead of time.. Pretty slick if you ask me but as usual.. YMMV.. The weights come in about 190 plus 2 and minus 1 gr. True not as accurate as Montana Gold or other jacketed bullets, but I'm paying a LOT less money for them.. I am burning time, but that's ok, I seem to have a fair amount of spare time now and then and when it's storming outside I can do something productive other than watching the boob tube or um.. surfing the web. :D

post-1780-126602868673_thumb.jpg

Edited by sargenv
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It was reccomended that you anneal the brass. I bought an inexpensive stainless steel colander and put about 400 pieces of brass in it and put it on the BBQ burner of my bbq for about 30 mins. By the thermo on the bbq, it claimed 800 deg F. Anything over about 600 deg F will do it apparently. They come out to a nominal .3995" and I have yet to load and shoot them.. likely load a few for a range trip Monday. I'll see how they shoot through my 610's and my Para P16-40.

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I have been following the swaging threads over on that forum and this specific thing (9mm cased .40 bullets) intrigued me. I got a set of the dies from C4HD and have been messing around with them.

I held my tounge on this thread will everyone making fun of the guy for doing this. I think everyone needs to remember that there are different ways to look at this. We look at it as stupid because we think of shooting thousands of bullets and could never see doing this to keep us shooting. It is obvious that this guy is not a competition shooter as he doesn't even own a .40 pistol. The only pistol he owns is an original .44 Auto Mag believe it or not. For him, this seems to be more about accomplishing something rathen than producing bullets. I personally am playing with this because I see it as a way to make some nice heavy jacketed bulltes to shoot out of my 10mm's.

One last thing for those who think this guy is nuts. There are lots of people out there who think we are totally crazy for reloading ammo when you can go out and buy it. Just because you can buy great bullets from Montana Gold doesn't mean this guy is stupid for making his own.

Neal in AZ

BTSniper's a great guy. Definitely got a lot of people interested in swaging over on the CB forum. He got into swaging due to making brass out of .308 and .30-06 cases for his .44 AMP. He uses the neck section to make the bullet and the rest to make the brass. Each rifle case makes one piece of brass and one jacketed bullet.

I've been messing with 10mm bullets using the CH4D #101 dies in a RC press for about 3 years for my 10mm 1911. My bullets range from a 138gr JHP using .380 ACP brass to a monster 245gr JHP using a 9mm case. I push the 245gr 10mm bullet to about 1000fps in my 1911. Also cast my custom 225gr LSWC in 10mm and hit it with the swage die to make it a LSWC-HP (hollow point). I like to load this to 1100fps in my 10mm Commander. The animals I've killed with this bullet were DRT. Bang-flop. Dead on the ground before the gun came back on target.

Also very true about Speer and RCBS starting out like that too. I've got a set of dies to make .224 jackets out of rimfire brass. Have enough rimfire cases saved up to make over one million 55gr .224 bullets. Trying to find a used hydraulic swaging press to make the bullets. Could do it by hand but that kind of volume would get tiring real quick. Only cost really in that is the lead wire, which would run about 1.1 cents per bullet, free jackets, and just my time. If I swage my own bullets for the .223 Rem I can sell my reloads for about $160-180 retail for 1,000 rounds. I've shot this kind of bullet plenty and it stays inside 2 MOA at 100y. Makes a 50gr JHP or a 65gr JHP using the WMR cases. Cost to make bullets would be about $11 per 1,000 bullets. Not bad.

post-20291-126677703416_thumb.jpgpost-20291-126677702314_thumb.jpg

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