Swage Against the Machine

Equipment and Accessories Ammunition & Reloading
1

I promise, there is a legit topic and a couple serious questions about swaging here, but first. I love a good play on words, especially for a topic title.

Rock of Swages
What’s my Swage Again
Third Swage
Swagecoach, The Musical.
Parsley Swage Rosemary and Thyme
Turn the Swage
Swage in a Cage
Minimum Swage

Okay, now that I got that outta my system… Swaging.

I have a bunch of NATO 5.56 brass that needs to be swaged. I’ve seen several videos and read about a bunch of different ways to accomplish this, but I’d like to get some first hand real world input.

Of all the tools, I like the bench mounted lever type such as the Frankford and RCBS offerings. They look like they would do a nice clean shear. I also find the RCBS reloading press swaging die and shell holder set interesting but fear it will make a mess of the press.

Since I have a couple few thousand cases to process, I was also thinking about a case prep center so I could swage but also chamfer debur and clean necks and primer pockets more easily. Just deburring eats a lot of time when bulk processing. My main concern with prep center swaging is that it’s not really swaging, it reams out the pocket, and it looks like it could deform or oversize pockets.

Now, about spent brass. I have mostly Lake City, which I know what I’m dealing with, but also a bunch of other 5.56 brass, and some 223 brass that looks like NATO spec. Some 5.56 brass does not have the NATO ( cross in circle) stamp, Actually, only the American Eagle M855 has the NATO stamp. IMI (Israel) and Poongsan (S Korea) are NATO spec, with sealed and crimped primers, but no NATO stamp.

Really confusing is the FC brass that looks like 5.56 brass, Annealed just like M855, has the mysterious secret large and small dimple binary code (gonna figure that out one day), and primers are sealed and crimped, but is marked .223. I need to know if the cases are thicker like NATO or just unsexy 223 that Federal uses the same mystery codes on.

2

I picked up a Hornady prep center to do trimming, cleaning and reaming and have done a number of 223/5.56 pocket reaming to remove the crimp. You get a feel for it real quick when you’re processing so many but when it bottoms out its done and you really cant go any deeper. IT is possible to go in crooked but you’ll get a feel for that also. You’ll know when you’re seating primers if the pocket is too loose for any reason.

3

tenor

That “for any reason” is what concerns me about using a prep center for swaging. Seems like all the other functions are hard to screw up, but the swaging looks easy.

4

Giggedy :joy:

5

The hornady swager for the lnl makes quick work of pocket swaging in .223 or .308.

You can definitely over dooo it. Once dialed in tho, you can swage as fast as you can load a cartridge and pull the lever.

Many will say you can just ream out the crimp, and you can! But it takes more finess.

6

Ive done it both with RCBS swager die on press and with Lyman case press express.
I prefer reaming after trimming on the lyman cuz I can debur and chamfer all in one sequence.

7

My primer pocket reamer has a shoulder so it just barely chamfers the outer edge to remove the staking and stops. I can’t really imagine how it could mess up the pocket

But I’ve also borrowed someone’s Dillon Super Swage and it’s much faster

8

I have a really old RCBS pocket reamer that’s great for removing the military crimp in .762x51 cases!

9

I have the Dillon Bench Swager if you want to try it out. I havent used it much yet but it works good.

10

I am currently using a Lyman case prep multi-tool that does the same. It’s very slow, and i have taken too much brass off the case head with it, if not holding square.

Cool, bring it to the next shoot. Ill bring some cleaned nay-toe brass and try it out.

11

So as to swaging.

I have the RCBS. It’s not bad, but the Frankford’s spring loaded rod would be nice if it works properly all of the time as manually flopping the rod back and forth is annoying. I’ve also used the dillon swager. It is extremely analogous to the RCBS, which is what RCBS was trying to do when they made a non-infringing

I also have the hornady swager for the LNL-AP. Do not buy it. The bushing inserts in the press are just not designed to tolerate the forces it requires in the direction the forces are applied.

The best swaging option for any kind of volume at prices mere mortals can afford is the lee APP with the swager. Add a case feeder to it and you can do some decent volume pretty quickly.

Also of note is none of these sheer anything. They are swagers. They swage. They just shove the metal around, not lop it off like reaming does. I’ve reamed as well. Swaging is better IMO.

As for .223/5.56 brass. There is no universal this is thicker. One of the reasons you see crimped primers and annealing all over the place today vs. headstamp if that milspec was changed to allow commercial ammo production to meet contract needs when there’s a run on ammo during the bush administration.

12

The LNL swager flips the case upside down and uses standard up motion to push the case into the swager die. If it cant take that force? How can it resize the entire cartridge which takes considerable more force?

Whats the weak point youre referring to? Ive done well over a thousand rounds on my .223 swager and the only issue ive found was inconsistent swaging between head stamps, which is expected.

Ive found with the lnl you can over swage the pocket, and in extreme cases colapse the pocket from the inside by the support stem.

13

Swaging takes as much or more force than sizing unless your cases need a lot of sizing or your case lube sucks. But more importantly with sizing there’s force applied on the lever pull, but also on the lever push to get the sizing mandrel back out of the case neck. So the die and bushing get both pushed and pulled on. With swaging is all push, and over time that seems to start pushing the inserts that hold the bushings out. It may comes down to machining tolerances vs the press fit, but it happens. 1000 rounds isn’t when you usually see it by.