Years ago handloaders swaged bullets on RCBS Rockchucker presses, hence the name Rock Chuck Bullet Swage (RCBS).

Guess most folks today use custom presses specifically made for that task. Myself, have three of Ted Smith's Mity Mite presses for bullet swaging.

Anyone ever try bullet swaging on a progressive press like a Dillon ?

Hammer

I have not tried swaging bulets on a Dillon 450 or 550. I HAVE swaged bullets with no problems on a Dillon 300.

Just a note, I think maybe a time-line would show that most bullets swaged with RCBS dies on RCBS presses were made before the Rockchucker Press came into existance. The orginal RCBS swaging press was much sturdier than a Rockchucker. So were the RCBS A-2 and the RCBS A-3 presses.

I believe the "Rockchucker" name was selected to gain positive spin for a new press from the already well established RCBS label which, as you note, stood for Rock-Chuck Bullet Swage. The Rockchucker press was a relatively late development in the history of the RCBS company, IIRC. (60's?)

At least, that';s the way I recall it. Am too lazy to go look it up.

I may be wrong but I don’t think the Dillon press has enough leverage I have had some problem resizing Mag pistol ammo if it has been loaded to hot.

I have 2 550b presses and 1 Corbin can’t remember the number but it was made for swaging bullets.

I would use a swaging press.

Still have and very seldom use my CH swage "A" matic. if you want a press to make bullets on find a old Hollywood press damn ram looked like a 1.5" pipe.

quote:

Originally posted by Hammer:
Years ago handloaders swaged bullets on RCBS Rockchucker presses, hence the name Rock Chuck Bullet Swage (RCBS).

Guess most folks today use custom presses specifically made for that task. Myself, have three of Ted Smith's Mity Mite presses for bullet swaging.

Anyone ever try bullet swaging on a progressive press like a Dillon ?

Hammer

The problem with any progressive press for swaging is that bullet swaging uses different pressures for different stages. For instance, if you were to put a core swage die and a core seating die on the same moving ram, you'd have to apply the same stroke to both at once, whereas you want to be able to set the core swage for a positive stop position to get a fixed volume of lead (for consistent weight), and be able to "feel" the amount of force applied in seating the core so you can adjust for potentially heavier jackets, set aside any that seems to have more or less effort because something varied in the materials...you can't tell any difference in core seating if you have other dies being operated at the same moment.

I used to build a high speed power swaging press that I called the ASP-1 (Auto-Swaging Press, Model 1) which turned out around 10,000 bullets an hour. But I sold the inventory, plans, and rights to make it decades ago, because the business model people used was a high volume, low cost one that was in direct competition to cast bullets. It basically assured people would be working as hard as possible to make as many bullets as they could as cheaply as they could...why not give them away and go broke even faster? That is precisely what most of those clients did, go broke in a low margin market.

Today, with the 50k to 80k such a machine would have to cost, it makes even less sense. The mass producers already have a pretty good head start on low priced high volume distribution. Instead, a person could go into the custom bullet field where high quality, low volume specialty bullets bringing in a very high margin gives them a solid clientel, far less investment (you can go into that field for less than $2k, get top end power equipment for under $8k), and quickly change from one product to another for very low cost in tooling.

But the reason the ASP-1 was a technical success, if not economic one for the clients, is that it used a rotary or dial table, and rotated a series of dies (ten) under a single hydraulic ram, one at a time. Each stroke only did one thing, so it was able to do it right without interference from other operations. But a motor turned the table around quickly, and triggered the ram on the press head.

The dial table stopped momentarily when the die lined up with the head, the bullet was struck, and then it rotated to the next position for lubrication, ejection, etc. These were lead pistol bullets, not jacketed ones. Jacketed bullets usually require ejection and insertion the other direction to form the ogive on the correct end. The automatic handling gets expensive (shuttle feeds, etc.).

Hi Dave,

Welcome to the AR forum.

I agree that a progresive is a bad idea for bullet swaging.