I've seen the same thing. Corbin makes the tools I think. I have a 5 gallon bucket full of .40's. Some day I'm gonna try it. Too many other projects come first. Besides I cast a 44-250kt boolit and get 1100fps from my 7-1/2" Redhawk with no leading so that's good enough for me. For now anyway.
I just traded for a carbine that is gas operated and they said to not use lead bullets cause they will foul up the gas port. I do a lot of reloading so the home made jacketed 44's seem like a good idea.
That's who I was thinking about.
I've been making 223 bullets from 22 rimfire cases for a couple of years with great success using the Corbin die set. I also make half jacket 45 bullets with an old C&H swaging press. I have dies for 45 and 357 for it, and I have played with making copper tubing jackets for both rifle and pistol. I make 357 bullets from copper tubing pretty easily with a home made die set, I also make .429 and .458 bullets from the tubing as well. Very labor intensive, but if you have to have jacketed bullets it is certainly possible. .308 bullets aren't too hard to make, but I can buy them a lot easier than I can make them by hand. If I had a hydraulic press instead of the manual presses I am using, it would be much more easy. Blitzfike
I have a .44 bullet made from a 40 S&W case that a friend made with a hydraulic swaging press. I have not tried to fire it. One thing I discovered is that the 40 case head is still at .424 inches. It did not swage out to the full 0.429" diameter like the middle of the case did. I am not sure this bullet would seal the gas well or fly down the barrel straight since the back of the bullet is so small. Did you get any feedback on how those bullets performed?
There was one statement I found that said they shot good. I am thinking about annealing the case and making a expander to take the case out to .429 - .430 and then setting a cast .40 bullet in it with epoxy, and after it cures trim the case back to the top of the land, I made a mock up by trimming the case and setting a .40 swc bullet in and it came out pretty close to 240 gr. without the epoxy.
