Time to make the donuts....

[D Coots]

Dave, are you speaking of the wall thickness variations in jackets, or the true roundness of the finished bullet?

Roundness in the core seated jacket and in the pointed-up bullet.

Thank you spell check for "roundness"

 

[JoeDuke]

I agree, Joe.

Experimenting with core seating pressures and intentional jacket stretch up to the failure point (around .009-.010-ish on a 1.00" J4), the outer diameter of the cored jacket would pick up a tenth or two as the seating pressure got into the stupid-high range. With normal and adequate core seating pressures, I've not seen an issue, though.

Hope that ejector and extra pins got you up and running.

Good shootin' -Al

Yes Sir. They are deeply appreciated.
Lots of experimenting and learning going on.

 

[Stumpy1]

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

This has been probably the most interesting thread I have ever had the pleasure of reading!
I think I have gained a LOT of insight into how bullets are made, and how complicated a process it truly is.

I wish I lived closer to you guys, just so I could watch and learn.

Thanks again for sharing all your hard-won knowledge!

Frank

 

[D Coots]

Knowledge...I'm short on that. I made up a few hundred on a set of dies that in the past I hadn't had much luck with for the Iowa State Group Match in May at Webster City. They shot pretty well...

I tried a couple times to replicate them.....NOPE....so much for keeping detailed records...

Later

Dave

 

[Dean Ekstrom]

Al and Randy

Do you monitor the concentricity/runout on your core seated jackets and the pointed up bullets?

 

[Fuj]

I'll throw in another couple of pennies asking about the lead itself
and why some will go with a slight alloying over pure lead. I know
when I use to swage half jacket bullets for the .41 mag i had to use
the purest lead I could find. Any alloyed lead, had me stalling the
press. Back then, I would use a wash of Naptha and STP, then let the
Naptha flash off. A day later, they were good to go. Slippery critters

 

[Tparrish]

I did a bit more work on the collet holder adapter today. Two more holes were milled and tapped to allow for fine tuning the float, if needed.

The adapter actually started out as a Lee 50 BMG shell holder which I whittled on. We wanted to start this way because of the very good fit of the shell holder into the ram. This is what it looked like to start.

This was my first version. While the concept was fine, it simply took up too much room. I grabbed another and went from there.

Final tweaks were done at Randy's including threading the ram further. The engineers at Lee were very helpful and gave me specific tap spec's. It worked great.
114 gr. .925's:

117 gr. on the 1.00" jacket:

The business end:

Also, I pulled the ejector rod inboard about an inch. I wanted it outboard to make room for a bullet chute I had in mind. Pulling it inboard give it quite a bit more rigidity. The bottom plate got whittled a bit too.

 

[Tim Singleton]

Tim, the sharp edge I'm referring to happens at the base of the bullet....the pressure ring area.

The thinking (thunkin' ) is that the extra couple of tenths (that my core seated jackets have) give the material more of a 'run' at the sides of the die than do the larger cored jackets. The extra amount of 'run' lets the material expand more aggressively to the die walls, causing the knife edge and the harder ejection.

Randy is applying his tender ministrations to a new core seat die to pick up the size a couple of tenths...then we'll know for sure.

Your thoughts? -Al

Gotcha. I thought lead line

 

[Tparrish]

Real interesting reading. Lots of really knowledgeable folks here. All I know if I tried any of this mine would probably come out square or sharp on both ends

 

[AlNyhus]

Al and Randy

Do you monitor the concentricity/runout on your core seated jackets and the pointed up bullets?

Dean, the only shank/base checkers I have are my barrels. Randy has multiple checking fixtures that he uses as Q.C. monitors...starting when the jackets hit his door. When I get a different lot number of jackets, I hit the Easy Button and just ask him how they check out!

 

[jackieschmidt]

Dean, the only shank/base checkers I have are my barrels. Randy has multiple checking fixtures that he uses as Q.C. monitors...starting when the jackets hit his door. When I get a different lot number of jackets, I hit the Easy Button and just ask him how they check out!

Al, some two decades+ ago, I made a little contraption to spin the 6 MM J-4 jackets. It was crude, but worked.

I would spend considerable time at the kitchen table, spinning each jacket out of the bucket, trying to cull any with .0002 or more wall variation.

When I told Cecil Tucker and Charles Huckeba about my efforts, they laughed and more or less implied that I was nuts

 

[Dean Ekstrom]

Thanks for the response Al. I check concentricity while core seating jackets and find there is a "sweet spot" relative to core seating pressure and jacket stretch. I also check concentricity while pointing up.
It may or may not matter on the paper, but it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when the concentricity is good.

 

[David Conder]

So they don’t check out tell us what do you do with the jackets you just bought
thanks

 

[RGRobinett]

Al and Randy

Do you monitor the concentricity/runout on your core seated jackets and the pointed up bullets?

Dean, and all interested. Here is a link to some video on my web-page < https://bibullets.com/bullet-making/ > regarding some of my practices. In answer to questions here, I just made the video on spinning a cored jacket and finished bullet - you'll need to scroll to the last video.

Upon delivery, the first step for every shipment, every item, is to randomly open several cartons and then, two buckets from each carton, and check the jacket wall thickness for variation - that is what determines center-of-gravity offset, which translates to static imbalance. For BR quality bullets, the maximum wall thickness variation should be 0.0003": the vast majority of J4 jackets are <0.0002". The Cg offset will be roughly 1/3Rd of the wall variation, or, on a 0.0003" jacket, 0.0001" of offset.

Roundness (TIR) is independent from wall thickness variation: the two hoops (internal vs external) may be perfectly round, but non-concentric . . . it's not easy to keep the terminologies straight. This is a facet that we shooters routinely mix-up and not just with these specific issues - another distinction we should make: precision and accuracy are NOT the same, yet, we regularly interchange them.

Way back when I began making bullets, being dumb and naive, and having observed all sorts of half-baked and clever jacket measuring devices, none of which correlated to a specific DATUM, I contacted SpivCo, Inc., maker of J4 jackets, and requested a full set of their jacket prints, explaining that I wanted to KNOW WHERE to measure the jacket for QC. To my good fortune, they obliged, sending a set of prints from .224, through .30 Cal.

In all that time, I have had to reject a single [J4] jacket Lot - .30 Cal., 1.00" long (100,000 pieces) which, after asking how and where the jackets were measured, SpivCo promptly replaced them: that Lot displayed >0.0004" of wall thickness variation. After some discussion, they understood that I was not going to accept "out of spec" . . . and never again did I receive questionable jackets.

That said, I doubt that there is now, or, ever was a human who could shoot the difference: In many discussions with [the late] Allen Bench, he always assured me, that via a rail gun, in a tunnel, up to, at least, 0.0005" wall variation is, "lost in the noise". Mr. Bench was both knowledgeable, and great at constructive criticism. RG

 

[Mulligan]

Dean, and all interested. Here is a link to some video on my web-page < https://bibullets.com/bullet-making/ > regarding some of my practices. In answer to questions here, I just made the video on spinning a cored jacket and finished bullet - you'll need to scroll to he last video.

Upon delivery, the first step for every shipment, every item, is to randomly open several cartons and then, two buckets from each carton, and check the jacket wall thickness for variation - that is want determines center-of-gravity offset, which translates static imbalance. For BR quality bullets, the maximum wall thickness variation should be 0.0003": the vast majority of J4 jackets are <0.0002". The Cg offset will be roughly 1/3Rd of the wall variation, or, on a 0.0003" jacket, 0.0001" of offset.

Roundness (TIR) is independent from wall thickness variation: the two hoops may be perfectly round, but non-concentric . . . it not easy to keep the terminologies straight. This is a facet that we shooters routinely mix-up and not just with these specific issues - another distinction we shouldmake: precision and accuracy are NOT the same, yet, we regularly interchange them.

Way back when I began making bullets, being dumb and naive, and having observed all sorts of half-baked and clever jacket measuring devices, none of which correlated to a specific DATUM, I contacted SpivCo, Inc., maker of J4 jackets, and requested a full set of their jacket prints, explaning that I wanted to KNOW WHERE to measure the jacket for QC. To my good fortune, they obliged, sending a set of prints from .224, through .30 Cal.

In all that time, I have had to reject a single jacket Lot - .30 Cal., 1.00" long (100,000 pieces) which, after asking how and where the jackets were measured, they promptly replaced: that Lot displayed 0.0004" of wall thickness variation. After some discussion, they understood that I was not going to accept "out of spec" . . . and never again did I receive questionable jackets.

That said, I doubt that there is now, or, ever was a human who could shoot the difference: In many discussions with [the late] Allen Bench, he always assure me, that via a rail gun, in a tunnel, up to, at least, 0.0005" wall variation is, "lost in the noise". Mr. Bench was both knowledgeable, and great at constructive criticism. RG

Thank you Randy.

CW

 

[Dean Ekstrom]

Dean, and all interested. Here is a link to some video on my web-page < https://bibullets.com/bullet-making/ > regarding some of my practices. In answer to questions here, I just made the video on spinning a cored jacket and finished bullet - you'll need to scroll to the last video.

Upon delivery, the first step for every shipment, every item, is to randomly open several cartons and then, two buckets from each carton, and check the jacket wall thickness for variation - that is what determines center-of-gravity offset, which translates static imbalance. For BR quality bullets, the maximum wall thickness variation should be 0.0003": the vast majority of J4 jackets are <0.0002". The Cg offset will be roughly 1/3Rd of the wall variation, or, on a 0.0003" jacket, 0.0001" of offset.

Roundness (TIR) is independent from wall thickness variation: the two hoops may be perfectly round, but non-concentric . . . it not easy to keep the terminologies straight. This is a facet that we shooters routinely mix-up and not just with these specific issues - another distinction we should make: precision and accuracy are NOT the same, yet, we regularly interchange them.

Way back when I began making bullets, being dumb and naive, and having observed all sorts of half-baked and clever jacket measuring devices, none of which correlated to a specific DATUM, I contacted SpivCo, Inc., maker of J4 jackets, and requested a full set of their jacket prints, explaining that I wanted to KNOW WHERE to measure the jacket for QC. To my good fortune, they obliged, sending a set of prints from .224, through .30 Cal.

In all that time, I have had to reject a single jacket Lot - .30 Cal., 1.00" long (100,000 pieces) which, after asking how and where the jackets were measured, they promptly replaced: that Lot displayed >0.0004" of wall thickness variation. After some discussion, they understood that I was not going to accept "out of spec" . . . and never again did I receive questionable jackets.

That said, I doubt that there is now, or, ever was a human who could shoot the difference: In many discussions with [the late] Allen Bench, he always assured me, that via a rail gun, in a tunnel, up to, at least, 0.0005" wall variation is, "lost in the noise". Mr. Bench was both knowledgeable, and great at constructive criticism. RG

Thanks Randy.

 

[jackieschmidt]

Al, I dug through my various boxes of junk and found the little thing I made.

The little arbor has a fit for the base and a fit about 3/4 way up the .825 jacket. It has just enough clearance in the ID to allow the jacket to spin freely. The little tit sticking out of the base fit goes against the inside base, acting as a positive stop so the inside taper won’t give a false reading.

The indicator stylus gone’s just behind the outer fit. You just slip a jacket on an spin it, being sure to hold it against the inside base.

It’s simply something I made to get a true wall thickness when the ID is tapered.

I may make an arbor for my 30 caliber .925 jackets and check them.

 

[AlNyhus]

Here's what to do when your best pal gifts you a die he made that makes killer good .30 cal bullets....and you stick one. Titles could be:
'How To Be A Double-dumbazz And Survive'
'How I Spent Saturday Morning'

-Put everything down and walk away.
-If the electric control box on your lathe is off getting fixed (it is), think vertical.
-Screw a 7/8-14 coupler nut on the die.
-Push a 5/16" O.D./1/4" I.D. nylon sleeve in the die to protect it. Don't screw up worse than you have.
-Put it in the mill vise and use a 1/4" transfer punch to locate the center of the sleeve.
-With a good drill chuck in the mill, drill a hole in the base of the bullet.
-Screw in an aggressive screw...like Jackie's deck screw example.
-Tighten the chuck around the screw head.
-Face Easterly, make the sign of the cross and reflect on your past deeds.
-Lower the mill table.
-Breathe a sigh of relief.

 

[WayneShaw]

Good stuff, like drill and tap the bottom of a stuck case in a sizing die.

 

[WIB3]

Al, I dug through my various boxes of junk and found the little thing I made.

The little arbor has a fit for the base and a fit about 3/4 way up the .825 jacket. It has just enough clearance in the ID to allow the jacket to spin freely. The little tit sticking out of the base fit goes against the inside base, acting as a positive stop so the inside taper won’t give a false reading.

The indicator stylus gone’s just behind the outer fit. You just slip a jacket on an spin it, being sure to hold it against the inside base.

It’s simply something I made to get a true wall thickness when the ID is tapered.

I may make an arbor for my 30 caliber .925 jackets and check them.
View attachment 1623956View attachment 1623956

Here was mine.