Made a Pellet Swage Today

[ghostdncr]

I bought a Hatsan 130 .30 cal pellet rifle this week. Finding .177 and .22 pellets in stock doesn't seem nearly so much a challenge as looking for .30's! Anyway, I decided to spend some time down in the garage and whip out a simple pellet swage using my little Chinese mini lathe. We machine a LOT of 304 stainless at work and this was made of small drops that would've went straight to the trash. I'll be making another one from more suitable materials and to far closer tolerances, but will be doing the roughing in at work. The mini lathe is fun to mess with but felt totally unsuitable for machining something as mean as 304SS.

This tool is loosely based on the one a British fellow has been selling on the internet for several years. He's shut down for the pandemic and doesn't offer his for the larger calibers. This tool makes pellets that are similar to the old Sheridan 5mm cylindricals although in this case they are significantly larger, as you can see in the photo with a CPHP .177 and .22 for scale. Finished weight is approximately 50 grains. Here's some photos of the tool with a few of the finished pellets.

[Motorhead]

There ya go !! ... most excellent

[Gippeto]

Not bad at all. 

Made something quite similar in .310", fun little project.


Al

[a1rgunz]

That is awesome! From the looks of the rifling on the pellets, I'd say you nailed it pretty good.

[VaporTrail]

Ok so wait: what would be needed to swage my own pellets? Do I need a melting pot? No, right?

Curious because I saw a swage in the Classifieds, and it's in my caliber (.357). I was going to pick it up, but I haven't the slightest idea of how I'd do it or what I'd need.

Your stuff looks pretty good. Not really looking for a HP, so I'm really digging the look of your slugs.

[sharpend]

Hey John --
Early subscriber, and like Paul, I am curious also. So, how is the skirt formed into the slug? The caliber is swaged "onto" the slug? Is it similar in concept to lube/sizing a, for example, .357 SWC firearm slug?
Beautiful work and nice presentation!

[edit]
Yeah, I studied the photos closer. Genius you can do that. So you drive the center of the slug forward into the cup insert to make the dome head, while making the skirt? Right? Your first photo is what looks like before swage?

[darkcharisma]

looks good, hows the accuracy to 50 yards?

 

[ghostdncr]

I haven't done a lot with this since making it, but I was originally flattening lead round balls out into a roughly .28 caliber wire and clipping it off to stick out of the swage about a quarter inch. One tap with a small hammer seats it in the swage and partially upsets it to fill the cavity. With the two halves and the base punch assembled, I'd squeeze it together using a 4" bench vise. It doesn't take much pressure to make lead flow like molten plastic. Any excess lead flows out of the cavity and holds the swage halves apart, but a few trimmings with a utility knife makes for a crisp, even base. I didn't like how the ejector screw was working out so I've since made a smaller punch to tap the nose plug and eject the finished pellet. It sounds like a tedious mess but the process is getting easier as it goes along.

A slug mold would go a long way toward speeding up the processing time. Something like a four-cavity cylindrical dropping .290-.295 slugs that were just long enough to allow a bit of overflow at the skirt would be perfect, I think. Another alternative might be just buying commercial lead wire and clipping blanks to a predetermined length.

What triggered this was being unable to find .30 cal pellets anywhere in the U.S. but I've stumbled into a considerable number of H&N's and JSB's in the last couple of weeks. I haven't done any accuracy testing to speak of, aside from shooting a few at a paper plate. I did find out this rifle/pellet combo will blow through two 3/4" #2 pine boards at fifteen yards and keep right on going.  They do hit quite a bit lower than the commercial pellets I normally shoot but they are quite a bit heavier, too. Since posting this, I modified the nose punch from the hemispherical shape in the original photos to an elongated profile somewhat similar to a 9mm NATO bullet (best description I can come up with at the moment). I haven't weighed this new profile but would guess it to be in the 60+ grain range. The base punch could be modified to counter much of this additional weight, or at least that will be my next likely modification.

[Mark Davis]

Ok so wait: what would be needed to swage my own pellets? Do I need a melting pot? No, right?

Curious because I saw a swage in the Classifieds, and it's in my caliber (.357). I was going to pick it up, but I haven't the slightest idea of how I'd do it or what I'd need.

Your stuff looks pretty good. Not really looking for a HP, so I'm really digging the look of your slugs.

Those swage dies will need a press. The press they fit in is a specialty item, www.corbins.com/csp-1.htm
 with 5/8-24 threads in the ram, and 7/8-14 where the die goes in a regular reloading press. I have two (not for sale) purchased from an estate at a very reasonable price.

Once you have the press sorted out you would need pieces of soft lead, with a diameter small enough to slide in the die, say .330 -350". The length should correspond to the finished weight, slightly over finished weight if the dies have bleed holes.

The lead can be cut from lead wire, available in 50lb spools at $4.00per lb plus shipping. Or cast from lead, melting pot, mold, ladle needed.

[ghostdncr]

For any that may be interested, here's a simple cross-sectional view of a swaging tool like I've made. I'll explain the parts by color:

Blue: The base punch, which forms the pellet's skirt.
Orange: The base punch guide aligns the base punch with the bore of the swage block
Green: The swage block, whose bore determines the diameter of the finished pellet.
Light gray: The nose punch is a very close fit to the swage block bore, but moves enough to eject the finished pellet.
Yellow: Threaded ejector rod, which I eliminated and replaced with a punch that is much smoother and faster to use.
Dark gray: A formed pellet ready for ejection.

[sharpend]

Very interested! Thank you for the detailed description and diagram. Looking forward to further test results.
A hui hou.