Making Lathe Turned Bullets

[J E Custom]

The ones I made were 95% copper and 5% zinc and they worked great.

Copper was to soft and fouled badly and brass was to hare and I had to machine bands
on them to get any accuracy.

The 95/5 bullets engraved well and did not foul any worse than jacketed bullets.

I ended up losing 1 in 7 because of dia. tolerance but they out shot anything I could find

The probablem was they were no good for hunting I could not produce a quality hollow
point for expansion and maintain the exact weight.

As stated factory Mono metal bullets range as much as 1 to 2 grains in weight and have to
be sorted by weight for consistant accuracy and it's hard to put together 20 of the same
weight from a box of 100.

IMO it is not cost effective because of the cost of a CNC machine (You can buy a lot of
bullets for that much money and any other way to make them is to time consuming.

J E CUSTOM

 

[JOSE A. MARINE]

yes, its very expensive if you buy the CNC only for bullet making, but if you have any "lost" CNC time, its very easy just to have the program and make a few hundreds in the meantime.

as stated before, its just experimenting, for hunting I still preffera fistfull of brand new bullets.

one day my CNC bullets will be hunting.

JOE

 

[J E Custom]

yes, its very expensive if you buy the CNC only for bullet making, but if you have any "lost" CNC time, its very easy just to have the program and make a few hundreds in the meantime.

as stated before, its just experimenting, for hunting I still preffera fistfull of brand new bullets.

one day my CNC bullets will be hunting.

JOE

I hear you.

If I had a CNC machine It would not have any down time. Bullets would be a good fill for that
time.

Have you tried producing a hollow cavity to enhance the expansion ?

I made mine work (Expand)but the weight was just close enough for extreme distance accuracy.
I even made some solids with an Aluminum tip that looked great but were no better than
the 750 grain Amax, for the 50 cal (They weighed 690 grains and had the same exterior
dimensions as the Amax Increasing the BCs a little.

The solids out performed all other bullets, But I wanted a Mono Metal bullet for hunting.

I guess that was being greedy, I wanted accuracy and controled expansion consistency.

J E CUSTOM

 

[SidecarFlip]

Interesting thoughts on non productive time. Up here, we have considerable non-production time. I have to keep the dust off the Haas's.....

Aren't factory bullets swaged?

Maybe I'll program one machine to turn out bullets myself. Interesting scenario, though alloy rods are expensive in themselves.

 

[J E Custom]

Interesting thoughts on non productive time. Up here, we have considerable non-production time. I have to keep the dust off the Haas's.....

Aren't factory bullets swaged?

Maybe I'll program one machine to turn out bullets myself. Interesting scenario, though alloy rods are expensive in themselves.

Yes. most factory bullets are swaged and that is where the chance of a slight variance comes
in even on the Mono Metal bullets.

When you Swage a soft material like lead or copper they will compress to a different density
if the hardness/anneal is not perfict for the process. And may have some spring back varying
the size. The Turned bullet minimizes this (The reason a machined bullet can be slightly more
accurate Under the right conditions.

The allow rods can be checked for uniform hardness before turning minimizing this problem.
And on a good CNC machine tolerances can be better.

J E CUSTOM

 

[ROBSTER]

Anyone making them for a 375 with 1-11.5 twist or even a program for them and I would use the one at work.hahaha

 

[royinidaho]

I have to keep the dust off the Haas's.....
.

Check your PMs....

 

[SidecarFlip]

Check your PMs....

Check yours as well. I believe you'll find an interesting reply......

 

[royinidaho]

Check yours as well. I believe you'll find an interesting reply......

Got it!

Interesting for sure.

Trying to stay retired. Me too!!! But this thing is bugging me to death!!!

This idea is working out quite well. As it turns out there are many niches to be filled. These can be filled much faster than the big name manufacturers can or will respond.

Sooner or later they will respond however. Then the well will dry up.

LRH is getting quite a following.

 

[SidecarFlip]

It works so long as your scope of operations remains small. Larger companies have labor and physical plant to deal with plus layers of management and that all takes time and costs money.

That's why the Chinese and to a lesser extent the Taiwanese have become the dominant force in the world market. Pounding it out in the back room beats organized and orderly companies any day. Problem, the quality is non-existent or at least not what we anticipate or demand but we will (speaking as a whole) take lower quality over price and quality, just complain about it (on the net for instance).

Quality and cost are married to each other despite what popular opinion is, or wants to be, like Siamese twins, joined at the hip, sharing vital organs. Finding the balance and maintaining viability is the key.

When a company goes tits up, usually the root cause is they lost the balance between quality and cost and in their frustration, lost their financial well being too.

It's never been my personal intent to 'outgrow' my present facility or hire employees or anything that would compromise the essence of what I do, because, I can maintain quality as well as the whole manufacturing process and sell the finished product. I call it a 'hobby' but what 'hobbyist' has commercial CNC machines and a complete machine and fab shop, not many. It's a 'hobby' to me because I control the horizontal and the vertical, the buck stops with me and nothing leaves here without my approval...... I'm the dictator of myself....

I saw a video once of a grubby kid assembling bullets somewhere in a third world country, his 'table' a flat rock for sale (I presume) in a 'civilized' country somewhere. No quality there...... I'm sure everyone gets sold though, probably at Cabelas or Gander Mountain or Bass Pro.... Company buyers from large retailers are always looking for a bargain and a better profit margin......

Interestingly, people today don't care about what or where, they demand quality but they demand price as well. It's very hard to achieve a balance and even if balanced, maintaining it is a constant, ongoing regimen.

All you have to do is peruse the vast array of optics available on the net (and advertised on this site as click through(s). I wonder just what the percentage of them are made in some third world hovel by children. Quite a few I'd think. Even the respected names like Leupold and Stevens, I strongly suspect are 'assembled' here, not 'made' here from parts sourced worldwide but then made in USA and assembled in USA have somehow became to mean the same, not that they ever were...

While all of this has very little to do with lathe turned bullets on the surface, it has a lot do do with producing a product, lathe turned bullets for example and marketing them.

This forum, from what I see here is certainly a large cut above the norm, both in knowledge, common sense and wisdom. That's refreshing in itself.

I made a comment about AR style platforms (I'm not a fan of that platform) on another thread and the response was very adult like and presented well. That's unusual in this day and age of 'put it in your face and like it' attitudes.

Nice to be a member of a community that respects one another......

 

[Goose!]

Hi,
I realize this is a while after you initially posted...I'm interested in turning some bullets for kicks and giggles. What kind of lathe set up do you have/would you recommend?

Thanks,
--Goose!