I made a bar-napkin sketch of a manual pellet maker that uses two flat dies after touring an ARP fasteners plant and seeing how they roll threads onto their studs and bolts. Seemed like it would be pretty simple to roll something like lead with such a low BHN. I have a benchtop mill & lathe but not anywhere near tool & die quality so I never tried building it.Check out this video:At around 1:55 there is a thread roller which is similar to what I was thinking about. Mine was arranged vertically and lead rope fed in horizontally at the top. A stomp pedal sheared the rope, the dies rolled to size and a finished pellet fell out the bottom. A two piece die on either side would allow fine tuning head & skirt diameters.The only thing I hadn't figured out was how to locate the pellet while rolling to swage the skirt. Now that I think about it, even that wouldn't be a big deal if the orientation of the round was 180 degrees from how I originally pictured it. A dome head would be the simplest to form and in one pass all features would be formed. The same arrangement could be used for different calibers with a different set of dies.Not sure what I did with the sketches but I only put a couple hours of thought into it on the plane back from Spain after a business trip. Watch that video and see if any of this makes sense to you. PM me if all of this is clear as mud and when you go into production I will be a beta tester
See if this video will help you.
I think with all the variables involved if I were to make my own pellets they would be in the so called "ash can" shape :-).I know the diabolo form has really taken over....but IMHO it will be exponentially harder to do on a small scale....so a very good cylindrical pellet may be far far easier to make than a mediocre diabolo. I think MAYBE one could use lead shot and just ONE die to make a decent ash can pellet in one hit.A #T buckshot pellet weighs 12.0 grains according to one source, not sure how uniform they are, using a bleed die to get exact weight adds a step.Not sure if you can get pure lead T buck or not. "Good" buskshot is usually hardened with antimony.
Well to get your final form perfect, you will have to control all of the features of the pellet in one die ?? I would not think you can form one feature, then another, then another without damaging what was already done ?Bill
Quote from: willbird on August 02, 2013, 12:25:31 PMI think with all the variables involved if I were to make my own pellets they would be in the so called "ash can" shape :-).I know the diabolo form has really taken over....but IMHO it will be exponentially harder to do on a small scale....so a very good cylindrical pellet may be far far easier to make than a mediocre diabolo. I think MAYBE one could use lead shot and just ONE die to make a decent ash can pellet in one hit.A #T buckshot pellet weighs 12.0 grains according to one source, not sure how uniform they are, using a bleed die to get exact weight adds a step.Not sure if you can get pure lead T buck or not. "Good" buskshot is usually hardened with antimony.Fixed your pic.
Quote from: willbird on August 03, 2013, 01:06:55 AMWell to get your final form perfect, you will have to control all of the features of the pellet in one die ?? I would not think you can form one feature, then another, then another without damaging what was already done ?BillI am not Bill, all the features will be made in one press.