Making Copper Tubing Jacketed .357 bullets

Congrats Reload! Post some pics, I'm anxious to see how they turned out..The soft copper is tricky that's for sure. I have also made some progress with the soft copper although I am using a somewhat different approach. I opened one of the middle drawing dies up a couple of thou and made another one to fill in between it and the final drawing die. All in all I'm doing 5 draws. I had to go back to using the tapered punch for everything except flattening the base in the core seating die and that helped. That seems odd to me as I would think that put more pressure on the jacket than a straight punch. Like you, I discovered that I was putting too much pressure on the jacket when rounding over the end but as you say, just enough for the ejection pin to push it out works pretty good, I tried annealing between different draws but didn't seem to work as good for me so now I am not annealing at all. I don't have that many made yet as I don't have the ejection system built into the ram and everything is manual and slow. I cut 25 tubes and ended up with 20 usable jackets - well 18 on account of I used two of them to test the pinch trim setup I'm working on. No success on that one yet lol!

Ok here comes some step by step results views.

step one cut the tubing and square it to exact length and remove the burr

step two run it through the round over die. LUBE THE HECK OUT OF IT.

step 3 run it through the first draw die. Draw to .350 and then Anneal

step 4 anneal it then step 5 run through the .303 od die. and step six using your core seat die flatten the end.

just another view of the 308 jacket.

just proceed as normal to make your bullets Core seat point form.



this is a result of a mess up. I put too much pressure core seating and snapped the jacket .. So I figured why not a 30-30 bullet. LOL

Very nice indeed. Kudos! The hard drawn tubing may be easier to work with but at least it could be done this way if need be
Now just to figure out a way to make them in bulk lol!
I had thought about adding a tad of bacon grease to my lube mix - don't know how that will turn out but may try some. It dang sure won't be water soluble >>>

You are annealing the jackets twice?

when i first got the dies finished and tried to use them i had all kinds of grief so yes I was annealing them twice. that last batch that the pictures were taken from is only annealed once after the first draw.

How are you annealing? If you are doing them one at a time, it takes so long.

I have been looking at tools for bulk annealing brass, but they will not hold the small 22 LR cases.

Suggesting to use my wife's stove on the clean cycle to bulk anneal 22 LR hulls has gotten me some dark looks.

I can't afford one of the gun smith ovens that would allow me to case harden receivers, and bulk anneal brass on the low setting. And I do not have a 440 connection.

the copper jackets im doing one at a time with a propane torch. the 22 rim fires i am doing in the oven on the self cleaning cycle. My wife God love her doesn't give me any grief about it if fact when she decides to run the cleaning cycle she asks me if i have any brass to anneal.

I've been trying to talk mine into letting me use her stove on the self clean cycle for the 22 LR brass.

I finally got my 22 LR derim die and anxious to get started.

I still lack the bullet form dies, but at least I can make a nice pile of .224 jackets.

I thought you might be annealing the copper tubing one at a time which is very time consuming.

Have you tried a way of doing them in bulk?

lol nope guess im just a fire bug too i enjoy it.

Yeah playing with a propane torch is fun.

I'm just trying to figure how you might do them in bulk.