HB-9 updated text (PDF) - Corbin Bullet Swaging

Usually, the design of a swaging press gives you a big advantage in
speed, accuracy, and safety over using other kinds of presses. After all, a
pants press, a wine press, a full court press, and a printing press all are
variations on the term “press”, and they are not suitable for reloading.
Having said this, it is still possible to have custom dies built for just about
any press you own. Just bear in mind that there is time involved in making
working drawings, checking the stroke and ejection position, getting
special thread taps and dies (sometimes), setting up the tooling for a onetime
job, and other costs that have long been amortized over thousands
of dies when you choose a standard production design instead.
Besides, we may have spent a couple of decades and tens of thousands
of dollars in testing and improving our standard tools and presses.
Building something for the first time in a different design often requires
some investment in development, which may be a waste of your money
if we’ve already done it a thousand times before in a different and better
system, which would be yours if you just got the right platform to run it
(the proper press). With a different, special tool, you get to pay for any
unforseen development requirements. With our own products, we already
paid for development and you get to benefit from that. It’s usually a better
deal.
Swaging Principles
1. Always swage “up”, never “down”. Swaging down is a contradiction.
You “draw” down, by pushing something through an open ended
ring die, like our JRD-1 jacket drawing die, or BRD-1 bullet reducing die.
Drawing makes the part smaller in diameter and longer. It can also cause
separation of the core and jacket if done to excess. Swaging makes the
part shorter and larger, and tightens the grip of the jacket on the core.
2. Pay attention to the instructions. If there are special written notes
with your die, they are important because they modify or improve the
general instructions and replace them. If there is a difference between
specific notes sent with your set of dies, and anything published in general
(as in this book or in general printed literature), follow the special
written instructions in any respect where they may differ. Swaging is partly
an art, and various materials or sizes may react differently to the same
general kind of operations.
3. Use the right terminology! I cannot stress enough how important it
can be to read what you have before you start to use it, and order the right
part numbers and names of parts. People call the external punch everything
from a “pin” to a “ram” to a “die” to a “die punch”. How are we
supposed to know what you mean? If you order it wrong, you get to pay
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