I have a small machine shop attached to my woodworking shop, but I am NOT a machinist and especially not a die maker, lol. It looks pretty easy to me to make the die- what am I missing? I can understand very tight tolerances of the plunger rod to die body, but for the die itself I was thinking of just chucking up a tool steel round into my lathe, drilling and boring to dimension, then using a ground form tool to make the nose. Hollowpoint pin would be a separate plunger from the opposite direction so when you cycled the press back down, it would push up and eject the slug. Is the problem tolerances, or am I oversimplifying the design? If I could make the dies out of t6061 aluminum I could just use my CNC which would be a lot easier to hold .001" tolerance on than my old Clausing.Thanks for sharing your experience!-Michael
I think they are so expensive because they are held to tighter tolerance and demand is low. I am making a press from a hydraulic cylinder, valve and salvaged pump. Results so far seem promising and cost has been quite small. Now making a good working die will make you pull your hair out......Dave
I didn't realize you could get into making swaged slugs for $1,500. I should have just saved my money instead of buying all these molds.
Seeing this stuff makes me want to get my move done so I can set up the shop again and make a swaging set up. I don't understand how these are so expensive, there's not much to them. Either lots of overhead by farming out the machining, or lots of markup, or both.