I have a new toy, a .240 Apex and to say .245" bullets are hard to find would be an understatement.

Any experience with swaging factory jacketed hunting bullets up to desired diameter?

I have also contacted a company that has plated bullets in the past, anyone gone that route before?

I'm looking for a simple cost effective solution.

Try normal .243.

You probably find they work.

.244 H&H uses .245 bullets, I shout .243 in it with no problems at all.

I slugged the bore and the grooves measure .246", seems like a lot but might be worth a try.

you might try a Lee bullet sizer in
a size you need and run .25 cals
with Imperial sizing wax.

Just a thought IF they're not too large dia.

George

I have dies that will size a 277 bullet down to 264. In several stages.

Works great.

I think that drawing down a .257 bullet will be my plan. Most sources claim .006" as a max for drawing down, I think that number comes from Dave Corbin. More research shows people having good luck beyond that such as Saeed has suggested. I think I will start with a good quality bonded bullet and give it a go. Thanks for the input.
Steve

Back in the dark ages of the 1970s, there were no or few 9.3 bullets on the market to shoot my double rifles with, so I made dies to swage down .375 bullets. In my rock chucker. Works very well. In fact, I just made another die two weeks ago for a guy.
But yes, now Lee makes the dies. Not for 366 though.
Before you claim a min or max that you can size something, consider that there are many factors involved.
Jacket spring back and core looseness is one of them.
Best way is like Saeed does; machine them out of bar stock.
However, all this is way too much drama for a 243, for me.

I have several reamers made to my own specs.

The reamers are straight with a slight change in diameter- getting thicker towards the base.

I have these in varying sizes, so I can make practically any size I wish.


A gentleman man had thousands of 277 caliber bullets, but no rifle in that caliber.

He had a 6.5x55 Swedish.

I made him dies that would swage his bullets down.

Worked very well.

I don't recall the calibers involved but I tried swaging up bullets and had the jackets split at the tip and lead extruded from these splits. It looked like the bullets would be lopsided. This was years ago so can't give more details.

The splits could have been caused by trying to swage up bullets from one ogive to another ogive.

Your splits were caused by doing it backwards; when you swaged UP, you must have a punch made to exactly fit the point, ogive. If you push them from the base, it will do what you describe.
You can change ogive shapes, just can't have it totally unsupported.

it'd be a lot easier to just make them from scratch.
probably only cost like 3 grand for the stuff to do it.

or you can open up the bottom half of a .243 die set to .245 or .246 and have a dual size bullet like Hawk makes.

quote:

Originally posted by skb:
I think that drawing down a .257 bullet will be my plan. Most sources claim .006" as a max for drawing down, I think that number comes from Dave Corbin. More research shows people having good luck beyond that such as Saeed has suggested. I think I will start with a good quality bonded bullet and give it a go. Thanks for the input.
Steve

I swaged .429 bullets down to .416 that's .014 dif in one pass .006 shouldn't be a problem.

Get a lee push through 243 sizer polish it out until it gives you .246 bullets and go to town

Try powder coating of .243 bullets.