Cast & Swage .357 start to finish

[bduares]

I cooked up some .357 slugs for my Challenger today before work and decided to take a few photos to show the process of how I make 105 gr slugs

My lead melting rig is a Coleman 533 dual fuel burner running on regular unleaded gasoline. This sits on a 2x4 inside my Weber grill and lets me put the grill over it perfectly to support the weight of the iron casting pot. I use a lid to allow things to heat up as fast as possible, then turn down the heat a bit after it is all melted.

I use a Lyman dipper to pressure pour the lead into the LEE 356-102-1R 2 cavity round nose mold and tap the cast slugs into a large bowl of water to both cool them off and harden them a bit, then put the slugs on a towel to dry off.

Next I take them and pop them into the Swage-O-Matic press and make semiwadcutters out of them, unless I am wanting to keep them as round nose. Either way the next step is to tap them through the .357 sizer I set up next to the Swage press, where the finished slugs drop into a plastic tub ready to use.

 

[bduares]

I swaged up a couple of hundred 105 grain semiwadcutter slugs today from the round nosed slugs I cast earlier using the LEE 356 102 grain .380 mold.

[Cyknife]

I have a question for you. On your post about the swag o matic where you ran a 457 ball thru it.... did it seem  like it wanted to shear any off the ball? Like a bp revolver does.

[bduares]

It did actually. I found it left a ring of lead on the nose punch shaft just like it does in my BP pistol when I load it.