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In a previous post I said I had run out of .585 bullets fof my Snider and I was pointed in various directions for fresh supplies. In the end I used some .58 REALs given to me for the match, not ideal but at least I hit the target.

Then I had an idea, I had some .575 bullets for my muzzle loader and a .585 home made resizing die. What if instead of sizing down an over sized bullet I swaged up up an undersized one. With a bit of faffing about and the use of the workshop vice it seemed to work and I now remember reading that Enfield made bullets by swaging lead wire not casting.

How do they shoot, don't know yet, haven't had a chance to try them out. But they shouldn't be worse than the ones I bought and I already have a mould, lead and die so no extra costs.

I have bumped up bullets in the past to good effect, never for the Snider though.

The simplest has been whacking undersized round balls with a hammer to get them to fit revolver chambers, seating them sized them down to a uniform diameter.

So long as you get good fit then there is no reason why they shouldn't work.

I tried 10 on Sunday on my club's 50yd range, they were much better than the standard paper patched Lee .575 bullets. I think I now need to be more consistent in the compression process as some had quite distorted nose profiles.
As I said it was an experiment using what I had readily available, the amount of snider shooting I normally do at 50yds per year doesn't justify (in my head) buying a specialist mould.