Experimental 9mm swagged to .38 special bullets

Anybody who has frequented the range for various matches or just practice more than 3 times a week starts to pick up a LOT of brass and sometimes "duds" or dropped live rounds. As a rule of thumb I never try duds in my guns as they could be bad reloads etc... But the bullets are still good. I have a good size box full of 9mm bullets I've pulled from range dropped  ammo and "duds". I don't really shoot 9mm a whole lot but I do have swage dies to make .357 diameter bullets for use in my .38 special/.357 mag. Just for grins I dropped some standard round nose 124gr fmj in the dies with a SWC  type nose punch. The noses don't form fully because of the jacket but I do get a interesting wadcutter with a nipple type projectile. They are purely just for plinking in my revolver as they do not feed in the bolt action. I could try seating the wadcutter part flush and that might work but like I said these are just cheap fun as I don't shoot FMJ bullets often. 

9mm projectiles swagged for use in .38 special, Center round is factory .38 Special round that I picked up at the range.

7/12 Update- Shot a few of these into wet pack and had zero deformation and a lot of penetration. Interesting performance considering its a "junk" bullet and seemed to perform better than a regular round nose.

Bumping up jacketed bullets: or : The 9mm gains girth

I am mostly a cast boolit (bullet) kind of guy but sometimes jacketed bullets are needed or desired or are simply all you have on hand. In looking for versatility out of a gun (recently the .38 special/.357 magnum) In a pinch 9mm diameter bullets could possibly be loaded in .38/357 but accuracy would most likely suffer if left at their present diameter. This would be a sort of last ditch method to procure jacketed bullets if all other solutions have been exhausted. Access to a lathe could make a simple set of swage dies for a reloading press that could allow one to bump up the size of the bullets to proper jacketed diameter as well as change the nose shape.  Which could tailor the bullet to the intended use, one example could be to made a die and punch set that would give 9mm 124gr FMJ's a deep hollow point decreasing the likelihood they would over penetrate game or other predators. A letter drill bit size "T" has the happy coincidence of being exactly .357 diameter and could be used to make the die body.  If a reloading press is not a ready option (such as for people reloading with a lee loader kit or a small hand press) A thick plate of steel and a top and bottom punch used with a arbor press or even a hammer could be used to bump up the bullets in size.

I have a small box of range pick up 9mm jacketed bullets I have slowly pulled down over the years, people are always dropping bullets in the snow and rain or simply eject duds and I happily pick them up as there are always ways to recycle such things. Powder however is always disposed of as it is unsafe to try to identify and reuse such pulled down powder in such tiny lots. Just as an experiment I took a small sampling of bullets and ran them through my .357 single step swage dies pictured below are the resulting mostly formed SWC .357 bullets, all 124gr in weight. These could be loaded in .38 or .357 easily from here and sent happily down range. As with most things this novel concept is not new...it is simply not practiced often.

9mm bullets bumped up to .357 in a single swage die, not perfect but they should fly just fine.

"Teaching a man to fish": or : free .224 jacketed bullets...almost

The following is the current method I use to produce very low cost jacketed bullets out of .22 rimfire range pick up brass and a lead core. A lot of people are familiar with cast bullets being made at home but this is a step up from that.

First I secure a good supply of rimfire brass and wash them with hot water and a drop of dishwasher soap, then sort by head stamp as I try to keep the variables down so I use one head stamp/make for one run since the point form die sometimes must be adjusted for that jacket in particular. The cases after they dry get derimmed in the .22lr jacket maker (no picture at this time sorry) and each one is examined for flaws. The brass then goes into a small toaster oven I drug out of the dumpster a while back to anneal. I leave them in until they take a very dirty brass color...these will now be suitable to form into bullets.

The next step is to find something to fill the jacket. I go with lead cast cores so that is what I'll cover here. These drop at .180" and will get formed in the first die of a 3 die set to create a very uniform core. Below we see the raw core not yet squished into a core ready to be seated.

Above core prior to being swaged for diameter and consistency, Below after core is run in die. Note flaws all removed and very sharp cylinder look.


So we have a formed core and a formed jacket lets put them together. This step is as involved as the individual chooses to make it. De-greasing the core and the jacket is one such step, Bonding the jacket and the core is another as well as adding any ballistic tips or partitions as one sees fit. Below we see the core simply dropped into the jacket (not yet upset) and the excess lead from the last step coming out of the side of the die.
Now we need to make the jacket and core upset to .224 and make sure the core is in the jacket in a uniform manner so it wont offer inconsistencies. Below we see the jacketed core exiting out of the die (picture removed for editing, I will have this back in sometime this week sorry). It is now a uniform .224", The core and the jacket are as smooshed together as they are going to get without the use of chemicals. Now the jacketed cores will go into a container being glass or plastic. After I am done with that run of cores they will get sprayed with a film of my own homemade lube of 99% alcohol and Lanolin and shaken to distribute evenly then allowed to dry. This is a very slick lube and is used prior to all the other steps (I don't use it to form the lead cores however. The jacketed core is set tip down into the die and the press is slowly but firmly manipulated.

Above we see the finished product a short, large meplat 55gr bullet ready to be cleaned up and loaded. The last step I take is to dump bullets into a old t shirt put a small drop or two (for every 50 bullets) of Brasso and for 10 or so minutes polish them (by rocking the old shirt back and forth) so they are nice and shiny and all the lube and dirt is removed. Remember do not push these "free bullets" faster than 3,000 FPS or the thin jackets might come apart mid flight. The Corbin book claims 3,400 FPS but I have yet to try it. The thinner jackets and soft lead work very well on varmint but not on medium game. Bullets as large as .257" can be made with the rimfire jackets but they are lighter plinker bullets where as the RF jacket is the perfect length for a 55-62gr bullet. I figured that I need to make 8,000 of these free bullets to get the cost of the die set and press back but one should not look at the cost of the setup like that. Instead its a "give a man a fish, teach a man to fish" kind of thing. I'll never have to buy varmint bullets for my rifles ever again. And the joy of being able to supply myself with handfulls of these is tramendous.