Sooooo I made some small .25 slugs with .247 NSA wire and this was a different ballgame. For one, this wire feel like a it's made from an obviously different lead composition than from Corbin lead wire. Also, it's tough to manipulate such small cores in and around the dies. One issue is cutting the cores. Cutting cores with my Corbin Core Cutter I adjusted my set screw all the way in and the cores were still around 40 grains. I was aiming for about 28 grains. So I decided to cut cores with a pair of wire cutters. This widened the ends of the cores making them difficult to fit into the die. As a result, some parts of the ends of the cores got clipped off lightening the core weights beyond my target weight.
Below is a photo of some cores cut with the wire cutters. Above the scale are some formed hollow-ogive cores.
In this photo you can see how the wire cutters widened the diameter of the cut cores on the ends making it difficult to fit them into the die without forcing the lead in and cutting pieces off of the ends in the process. I must be mindful of how my floating bottom punch goes into my die when a core can not be properly situated to fall within the barrel of the die. If not careful the bottom punch can shift over and clip the edges of the mouth of the die damaging the surface that forms the base of the die. Perhaps the smaller diameter of the .25 caliber bottom punch provides the punch more room to move within the retainer nut securing it in the punch holder. I could've overlooked something. Just is just a note.
I attempted to make a slug similar to FX Hybrid weight slugs and ran into an issue. The main issue is that I pressed holes into the bottoms of the majority of the cores or slugs making them unusable. I did not push the bottom punch beyond the limit line, yet this occurred. In the formation of the hollow-ogive core I often got a dimple or what appeared to be a small black smudge within the hollow or the dish-base. The smudge most often was a hole and the dimple would pop like a burst disc while forming the hollow point turning the dimple into a hole.
The photo below doesn’t have the greatest clarity, but shows the shape of the dish-shaped slug, the hole in the bottom of the slug, and a hole in the bottom of a formed core. All were discarded to be cast at a later time.
30 grains and above produced slugs that appear usable. I haven't shot any yet. I'm hoping to figure out how to make a hollow-ogive cores without going too deep, yet keeping the cavity as deep as possible. Any suggestions? How are you all making good cuts on light-weight small-bore cores?
Edited 12/27/24, 1:04pm to add photos.
