I was wondering if it is possible to enlarge a jacketed bullet to the next size up by compressing it in a die? I have several thousand .308 FMJ on hand and would love to expand some to .312 to shoot in my '09 Argy.

Yes ....... the dies are called bump dies. I think they'll work for expanding about .004 up. I'm no expert ...... maybe someone with more experience can chime in ........

I had a friend who used to bump up 284" bullets to 288" for use in a 280 Ross. He reported good accuracy (he was using iron sights BTW) and no problems.

In theory as lead does not "spring" but is plasticene whereas brass does there should be no problem in going up.

From memory my friend in fact just ran the bullets through a normal "custom" swage die made to produce 288 bullets using "cup and core".

Should work as long as none of them are AP.

Bobster: You might try this website - www.ch4d.com. They deal in bullet swaging dies, & may have bump dies.

I remember old ww2 vet club members explaining how they made their own jacketed bullets using their cast bullets and expended brass cases.

Thanks all! Frank, I'll check CH4D for the bump dies.

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I was wondering if it is possible to enlarge a jacketed bullet to the next size up by compressing it in a die? I have several thousand .308 FMJ on hand and would love to expand some to .312 to shoot in my '09 Argy.

Hey !!!!..... I'm going to try that!!!!

The other day I was looking at my 180gr RNSP's and wondering if I could bump them up from .311 to .313 and make them semi-spitzer at the same time. I also thought of going from .318 to .313 but thought the copper jacket would have too much 'spring'. But maybe size them down to .311 then up to .313? Mmmmm..... (The idea is to get BT spitzers for my 303 Brit. But bumping up 308 bullets ...... great idea!)

303Guy you should have no trouble resizeing to 311 from 318 I go from 429/430 to 416 to use 44 mag bullets in my 416 taylor in one pass. I use a Lee sizing die. Works well

Thanks for that p dog shooter. I don't suppose it would be wise to fire 318 bullet in a 311 barrel! Apparenly someone actually did pressure tests and found that oversize bullets did not in fact raise the chamber pressure.

I made a bulk purchase ($32.00 worth) of 8,000 older C.I.L. 170 gr. .30-30 bullets made for the original .30-30 bore diameter (up until about 1904 or so) of .306". I bumped all of them up to .311" for use in my .303 Savage. They came out just fine and shoot tres bien.

(and just so you guys who read modern articles and think all .303 Savages actually had .308 groove diameters don't jump all over me, original .303 Savages called for .311" diameter bullets. C.I.L. made them that diameter until the 1970s, as they suited the older 99s perfectly, and were no problem in the newer ones with the .308" grooves. I still have some boxes of the .311 diameter C.I.L.s too and my 99 was made before the 1908 modernizations.....)

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... original .303 Savages called for .311" diameter bullets.

I had been wondering about that. Thanks for clearing that up.