I hope this is not a stupid question. would it be possibe to take a hornady 160 6.5 bullet turn it upside down and swage it in to a RN solid???? What kind of equipment would it take?

You would be suprised what you can do. Tools? A corbin swage machine and correct dies. Might have to have the dies made.

Anything is possible, I suppose but you are going to face two problems. One, the jacket has already been hardened from being pressed into the shape it already is. Second, you will have a tough time stuffing a bullet that is already .264 into a .264 die.

corbins machine will stuff it in there sideways

Your are right just too much trouble. I think I will try some cast bullets.

Besides the problems above, you still have a soft jacket that will rivet on impact, probably split some of the time and generally not perform like a true solid.

The good news is there are factory 6.5 solids from GS Custom and I think North Fork now. If you absolutely want to try a jacketed bullet backwards, try an Accubond or Ballistic Tip hunter-weight because they have a very heavy base jacket and would have the best chance of holding together.

With ordinary thin-jacketed bullets, running them into a die bass-ackwards is a piece of cake....at least in .30 calibre. Don't know about 6.5's.

I tried it just for drill on some C.I.L. 30-30 RN bullets. Negative perspiration, using an RCBS A-3 press and unknown make of bullet-pointing die. Got very nicely shaped noses and nice flat bases. Used RCBS die lube (their special stuff, not their ordinary gunk).

Don't know how those would work on big game, probably not well... C.I. L. jacket is too thin to be likely to hold together well. Loaded down to about 1,500-1,600 fps for fur-bearers they should be pretty good, I'd GUESS. One of these days hopefully I'll find out for sure.

thank you for the replies
I'll contact north fork.

Don't contact North Fork. I have it from a reliable source that 9.3 is the smallest solid they make

My mistake. But OTOH, if you shoot North Forks backwards, you have a nice copper solid with a little lead ass?

quote:

Originally posted by els:
I hope this is not a stupid question. would it be possibe to take a hornady 160 6.5 bullet turn it upside down and swage it in to a RN solid???? What kind of equipment would it take?

It really isn't difficult to turn open tip bullets into solids. If you can use a final diameter that is perhaps 0.0003 to 0.0005 larger than the original bullet, it can be done with just a point forming die and the appropriate swage press to operate it.

For instance, the Corbin CSP-1 S-Press and the PF-1-S point form die generates around 50,000 psi in the die which is sufficient to reverse the shape in a lead core bullet.

If you want the diameter to come out exactly the same as it started, you first must run the bullet through a simple BRD-1-S bullet reducing die. This slightly decreases the diameter so it will drop into the point forming die easily. Swaging always expands the part upward in diameter, so that when you remove the pressure, the jacket will spring back slightly toward the original size and release its grip on the die walls. If you stuff the same size bullet into a die it will tend to stick rather than release.

The press and the point forming die can also be used to create bullets from jackets and cores, which gives you the ability to change weights and design, not just take what the factory gives you and reshape it. If you decide to do that, you can add a core swage die to make precise lead cores, and a core seating die to put the core into a jacket prior to forming the ogive.

For a FMJ bullet, you can skip the core seating die, and seat the core in a jacket using just the point former. This uses internal lead pressure to form the ogive on the solid end of the jacket, which is normally the base.

The bullet is then reversed to slightly roll over the open base edge, and put back in and pressed again to fold the base over the core. If you left it open, the muzzle gas pressure would tend to peel the jacket back from the core as the bullet exited.

Still, for just a few bullets (or even a couple of hundred) it isn't cost effective to get the equipment. You'd want to be shooting a fair amount of them, or selling them, over a period of time to justify the $500-550 or so that everything would cost to set up. There are cheaper ways, too, but generally the accuracy or quality of the bullet will suffer if you try to avoid some of the steps, or try to do them without the right equipment.

thanks for the replies. I just want a few so I can shoot turkeys with my 6.5 mannilicher with out too much damage. sure wish I could get my hand on some old old military ammo with the rn solids and pull the bullets. I guess that stuff is now in the collector catigory now.

Graf and Sons has 6.5mm 144 grain FMJBT bullets in stock. I think they were around $10 for 100...

thanks I'll order some.

These folks have gas checked cast 6.5's.

https://secure25.securewebsession.com/proshootpro.com/order.htm

Bob