Hello.
I am opening a new thread on bullets for K1. As many of you probably know, I designed a mold for K1 that MP molds is now offering. So far, many molds have been sold. Casting is a very fast and efficient way of making bullets but it is not the most accurate. This has nothing to do with the quality mold, it has to do with the procedure of casting itself. Casting involves high temperature fluctuations and temperature diference causes material to change form and dimensions when transiting form liquid to solid state, that is why cast bullets are never as accurate and uniform as swagged. Swagging is a cold procedure that involves swagging die that shapes cold (solid state lead) bullet into shape of the die using high pressure. Swagging is however a much slower process...
I have been using Huben swagging kit for about two weeks now. The process is (as I already mentioned) slow but the result very rewarding. The bullets are extremely uniform (35,7 to 36,9 grain with my alloy) and perfect dimensions. The bullet design is a round nose, bore riding, boat tail. This shape ensures minimum friction in the barrel and best BC possible. With pressure set to about 180 bars, Huben spits them out at 300 m/s (just under 1000 fps)
. I did not have a chance to shoot them at longer ranges yet (bad weather) but they show great potential if they will be stable (I am confident that they will be). At 25 meters (27 yards) I consistently get groups smaller than 5 mm CTC. This promises under 1 MoA accuracy.
The kit includes a guillotine for cutting the lead wire and swagging die. Because it is quite hard to get a 5 - 5,5 mm lead wire in EU, MP mold made me a mold so I can cast the slugs that I then swagge. This allows me to have any alloy I want. If there will be interest, MP mold can offer these mold in the future... I use a workshop 12 ton hydraulic press for swagging. This is an overkill but it is the press I have... The bullets can be swagged with hammer as well but I definitely recommend using the press as the wight uniformity is much better this way.
Because swagging process is relatively slow and K1 is a semi auto arigun, I will probably only use there bullets when shooting form extreme accuracy. For plinking, MP mold is a good enough option and it is much less time consuming.
I do not have any confirmation yet but I am hoping that Huben will also make these bullets available as an end product as I realize that many K1 user are not too thrilled to have to make the bullet them self
I will share more details in this thread and I also intend to make a video on YouTube.
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