Swaging - When Things Go Wrong

Greetings,

After 25 years of swaging, I get to join the "I Broke A Die Club".

Good thing I know a guy with a Machine Shop.

Here are the die halves. It gives a view of how the die is constructed. Fortunately, the die broke on the bleed hole plane.

Cheers,

Dave

I know next to nothing about dies and swaging, or what those parts are or do.  For that matter, I can't tell what is broken - the only thing I recognize is the bleed hole.  Is this a die for making bullets?     .....if you just broke it now, the date setting on your Canon PowerShot A75 is not set.

Something else I'd love to learn how to do, which will most likely never happen......

Note the oily areas on the lower outside of the die opposite the bleed hole. It was cracked there for some amount of time prior to finally cracking completely today. FWIW.....

Thank you - I see that now.

Greetings Mike,

Yes, it is a die for swaging bullets from Lead slugs.

There is a nose punch and base punch on each end.

The press compresses the Lead and the excess squirts out the bleed hole. This is how the weight is controlled.

Cheers,

Dave

Thanks for the added detail.  
When this is being done, is the lead "melted" and gets poured in?  I think not....
I think I understand you put a "lead slug" (solid lead) into the components and it's all pressed into place, with the excess squeezing out the bleed hole as you wrote.

It sounds like an accurate, but slow, process.

Maybe sometime you can make a short video of how this is done.

(I'm in a tiny apartment - the chances of me ever doing anything like this are between slim and none, and slim left town...)
(The closest I'll ever get to any of this is reloading purchased lead bullets from Magnus, and reloading them...)

Thanks again!

Mike, if you want to try swaged bullets Magnus sells several I like the 814:

http://saas.shopsite.com/magnusbullets/store/page11.html

Thanks for the informative post - I learn something new today.

It seems like quite a bit of pressure would be required to swag bullets.  Can you please tell me how this pressure is generated?  Would a regular single stage suffice?