I've got a Lee mold to cast 93-grain roundnose bullets for my .32 Hand Ejector; they work quite well(they come out closer to 95 with the mongrel lead I use). The Lee mold for a .32 semi-wadcutter has a fairly narrow nose; the Saeco and RCBS molds for that style have a much wider nose, but I don't really want to lay out that much to try the idea out. So, came the experiment:
Take a drill press vise, and some lubed bullets. Hold the vise vertically, place a bullet on the lower jaw, turn the screw down until it just touches, and from there crank it down. A little experimentation showed that a half-turn just flattened the nose a touch, 1.5 turns squished the bullet too much, and one turn gave a nice, wide flat nose without expanding the body too much.
Take those bullets to the Lee sizer
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I've been thinking: if you wanted to reform bullets like this while eliminating the sizing die step, you could take a steel slug, bore a hole and polish it to .311 or .312 with a nice finish, and turn a ram for a proper fit. Drop in a bullet, set it on the vise jaw, drop the ram in and form. It would come out the proper diameter, needing only a second dose of lube*.
Or, yeah, you could find suitable cast bullets somewhere and buy them. I'll see how these work before taking such a drastic step.
*Lee specifies to lube bullets before pressing them through the die, otherwise you will get lead fouling on the walls that you'll have to clean out. I also took the precaution of treating my die with Microlon, and so far no fouling problems at all.
Update:
Windy in comments was right; just to try them out I loaded two bullets into cases and tried them in that .32; the slide will barely go into battery as the ogive engages the rifling enough to nicely engrave the bullet. And not knowing what that might do to pressure, not to mention others possibly not letting it get quite there, more thought is called for. First thing that comes to mind would be the die and punch idea above, but turn the end of the punch so it gives the nose a semi-wadcutter shape with that wide, flat nose. If I can get a problem with my little lathe figured out, I'm going to have to try that.
On the other hand, I loaded twelve into .32 S&W Long cases and tried them in the Hand Ejector: worked perfectly, and cut nice, clean holes in the target.
2 comments:
There's no way I could afford a PPK, so I got a surplus CZ50. Nearly identical in feel and profile, and it only cost me $99.00 shipped. American ammo nearly always ends up in a smokestack jam at round three. Euro and South American stuff never jams. Go figure.
Gerry N.
I have a Colt Hammerless, and that bullet on the right would never feed in my pistol. In fact, to use hollowpoints I have to buy Wolf. Whatever the next quality up manufacturer of hollowpoints is (CRAFT disease strikes again) has too broad a blunt nose to feed properly.
Good idea though, I do have a couple of pounds of lead . . .
The WV is apped up, which could apply to an iPhone or a tacticool M4gery.
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