3. What are the essential techniques for producing benchrest quality bullets?
This is how I make bullets. I pull the lead wire though a wire straightener, then cut it to short lengths. I cut 30 cal. wire to 28 inch lengths and 6mm wire to 18 inch lengths. I cut 30 cal. cores 3 grs. over weight and 6mm cores 2.5 grs. over weight. I use 2 grs. of lube per pound of cores and tumble 6 pounds of cores at a time for 5 minutes. My core lube is 4 oz. of Marvel Mystery Oil, 4 oz. of STP, plus 60 grs. of Johnson #140 stick wax.
After lubing the cores, I squirt them to size in a core forming die. I have ground the stop on the press so the handle breaks over, which helps to keep the cores uniform.
To degrease the squirted cores, I use 2 buckets and a 3 lb. coffee can with holes punched from the inside. I put the cores in the coffee can and Coleman fuel in the buckets. Wash in the first bucket, rinse in the second bucket. To dry, put the cores on a towel and GENTLY roll them back and forth 20 times.
For washing jackets, I have 2 one-gallon plastic jugs. I wash the jackets in Coleman fuel in one of the jugs and use a funnel with filter paper to drain to the other jug. Put the clean jackets on a towel to dry.
Tumble the jackets to apply the lube. I use a jacket lube consisting of 50% anhydrous lanolin and 50% castor oil by weight. Jackets will vary sometimes from lot to lot and affect how much lube you have to use. For a bucket of 800, 30 cal., 1.150 jackets, I start with 13 grs. of lube. I want the bullet to stretch to it’s maximum length with as little lube as possible when pointing up. Go up or down half a gr. at a time to find out how much lube for that lot. It also depends on whether you have carbide or steel dies and how slick they are.
Then stuff the clean cores in the jackets.
I seat the cores hard enough to expand the jacket to the size of the core seating die, from the base of the jacket to the lead line, and I stop. I don’t want to deform or get close to rupturing the jacket.
Pointing bullets up. I run bullets in the point up die to where they will not hang on the knock-out pin and stop just before they start to stove-pipe.
P.S.
It is VERY important that you weigh your lube and use the same amount each time. I have a Thumlers tumbler that I converted to use 1 gal. paint cans. It has an automatic timer, I tumble cores for 5 minutes and jackets for 15 minutes.
As I cut the cores, I weigh the second core from each length of wire so that if the wire is running bad I can adjust. Try to keep cut cores to plus or minus 3 tenths of a grain. If some cut cores are heavy and some light, you can’t make uniform cores.
When squirting cores you must squirt each one the same. You can’t squirt one fast and the next slow. When I get tired I take a break.
Guy
