Swaging bonded bullets

[Pheroze]

Has anyone swaged a bullet to a smaller diameter? The fine folks at Woodleigh have suggested I could do this to convert their bonded .416 to .411. The reason would be to use Woodleigh in a soon to be built 400 H&H. I have easy access to these bullets and I like the manufacturer very much.

I know. I know, why not just build a 416 Remington...well, that would be too easy now wouldn't it!

I have no experience with what swaging entails, and whether one would consider the final product to be advisable on an expensive hunt over seas. Any advice would be appreciated.

My gut is telling me to not bother, but I thought I would investigate this option a little further.

Thanks

 

[Bert the Turtle]

I've swaged a 300g XTP .429 bullet to .423 so I could use it for cheap practice ammo in my 404. It works just fine. I can swage mine in a rock chucker press and didn't need any fancy swaging press. Do need to lube the hell out of the bullets.

I am not an expert in the process, but as I understand it, the limiting factor for jacketed bullets is that the jacket springs back more than the lead core so if you swage too much you can get jacket separation from the core with resultant inaccuracy. You are looking at 0.005 reduction which is less than what I do so it should be within the realm of possibility. I imaging bonding would only help avoid separation. Dave Corbin can make the swaging die (or dies if the bullet is too tough to reduce in one step) for you. He'll need sample bullets to get it right because of the above-mentioned spring back.

If the Woodleigh people have no worries about using the bullet on game, I wouldn't worry about it too much. The bullet was probably swaged at some point in its life anyway. You can shoot a few into water or sand to make sure the bullet wasn't somehow weakened by the process. On the other end, perhaps the swaging work hardens the jacket a bit (I don't know) so you might want to check to make sure you are getting the expansion you want.

 

[Longwalker]

I once had a bunch of 180 gr. Winchester Power point bullets for a .303 British that I sold. Wanted to use them in my .308 Winchester. So I simply put some case lube on the .312" diameter bullets and pushed them through a cheap Lee .308" bullet sizing die in my regular reloading press. They came out .3085" or so and shot about as good as anything else I was using at the time. I only used them for punching paper and plinking so can't comment if the terminal performance in game animals was affected.

 

[mgstucson]

I know this is an old thread, but may still be of interest to some.

If the bullets are bonded, the jacket and core will not separate. The limit for swaging jacketed bullets is about .009 - .010 below original caliber (according to Richard Corbin, a manufacturer of precision swaging dies and presses.) You are well under that limit going from 416 to 411, so you should be fine. Beyond that limit, bullet distortion and eccentricity become an issue with accuracy. I am having a 400 Whelen made and I am buying a swaging die set to make 416 bullets, and reducing dies to make them 411, just as you propose. They may not be benchrest accurate, but plenty fine for hunting accuracy.