Resizing bullet UP!

[Kansas Ed]

I recently ordered a 1000 cast 40 caliber bullets very cheap from a gent who had bought out surplus bullets from PMC...I believe they were leftovers from the old run of 40-65 ammo that PMC used to load. They were supposed to be Meister bullets and were 265 grain pills. They were advertised as .408 diameter, but apparently it was a typo that wasn't caught until I brought it up...so now I have a 1000 bullets that actually are .405-.406 diameter...and this to use in 3 rifles which need a minimum of .408...so what to do....

Well, my buddy Ryan and I got to kicking around the garage and brainstorming...which may not always be good when two rednecks start thinking but here we are. We managed to find a bushing/collet out of a dotco which was somewhere around .411 Internal diameter. It was actually trimmed about .05 shorter than the bullet length, and has a shoulder towards one end which allows the bullet nose to protrude, yet catches on the ogive.

So we started playing with swaging the bullets in the vise. Well that worked pretty slick, so now I'm swaging them with the same bushing and my small arbor press. They are staying quite round, and are coming in at .410-.411. I have a sizing die to resize them as needed back to .4085, but my 40-72 accepts them at .411. It took about 15-20 minutes to do 50.

Didn't know if anyone had come across this issue before or not, but it does work pretty slick. One way to salvage a small lot of bullets if need be.

[TedH]

Slick way to get some good out of otherwise useless bullets.

[Old Savage]

Ed - leave it to you boy!

[mescalero1]

Don't knock it........
I have seen them cowboys back in New Mexico do some Pecos Engineering that would blow your mind, never get it past the inspector, but it works!

[Kansas Ed]

As much as I'd like to take the credit, Ryan was the one who had the majority of the solution...he's from Oklahoma, and they have ways of making things work in that state

Ed

[AJMD429]

Are they lead or jacketed...?

I've thought it might be nice to do something like that to get "Marlin" and "Puma" bullets for their oversize bores - the standard .429 and .430's evidently give some people fits in the .432 and .433 bores (I've not reloaded enough for them yet to have a problem).

[Kansas Ed]

Are they lead or jacketed...?

I've thought it might be nice to do something like that to get "Marlin" and "Puma" bullets for their oversize bores - the standard .429 and .430's evidently give some people fits in the .432 and .433 bores (I've not reloaded enough for them yet to have a problem).

Hard Cast lead W/O gas checks.

I just loaded 10 rounds each of two different loads for the 1895 Winchester 40-72 using COW filler. If Kansas ever dries up I'll post a report on this old gal.

Ed

[KirkD]

Sounds like a good solution. I do know that w30wcf on this forum has bumped bullets up to a larger diameter, although I don't know the details of how he did it.

[Old Ironsights]

They talk about "bumping up" bullets fairly regularly over on Castboolits...

[Hobie]

Neat!

[pdawg.shooter]

I bought a nice Lyman mould for my 44mag. I drops a 280gr flat nose GC bullet that is perfect for my Smith. Except one thing, it is only .427dia. Built me a die for my press that seats the GC and bumps them up to .431 at the same time. Works great!

[JimT]

George Nonte wrote extensively on this in odd and unusual calibers back in the 60's and 70's ... some of it was published in Handloader in those years. Bumping up bullets is fairly common among a small group of experimenters.

It does not work with jacketed bullets. The Jacket will bump up but the lead core becomes loose inside and contributes to very erratic trajectories. Don't ask me how I know.

[Ben_Rumson]

Neat fix ED..