I did a bunch as a kid. A shooting buddy had a wreck trying to HP 22LR in a drill press though. When the drill grabs and spins the case against the table, it blows up.
Drilling lead can be difficult. It's best to grind an 80 degree point on the drill. Make a Vee block to clamp on the table that centers the bullet automatically....unless you have a lathe. Piece of cake then.

 

There are some jigs for using case trimmers, I believe.

A 'center drill' for a lathe or mill can be used to leave a wide opening and deep (narrower) pocket. Whether that will work for you, is up to you, but it seems to me that it would be the most likely way to succeed if at low velocity and questionable bullet hardness.

Good luck and keep us posted.

 

Forster..... Hollow Pointer Kits

 

Forster..... Hollow Pointer Kits

I will be drilling unloaded bullets, not cartridges. I have a walnut vice for the drill table so I think it will work.

Buffalo Bore sells some .44 soft lead hollow points they claim are 8 bhn and 190 grains. With shipping, they'd be over $70 for 20. I was thinking of trying to clone that. I don't know how much lead will be drilled out so I'll experiment with both 240 gr swc and 200 gr rfn.

 

(1) anybody had luck getting cast to expand in .38 Spl. +p | Shooters Forum

 

You will have poor results from narrow drill hollow points at handgun velocities.
Here is a picture I posted a few years ago, Lyman 358430 190gr and an NEI 190 grain bullet.
Ed Harris wrote about drilling hollow points a few years ago. Ed reported his best results when drilled hollow points were opened up with a tapered countersink. Its a balancing act between bullet hardness and a good big cavity.

 

I’ve drilled hundreds of .458” and .512” cast bullets by placing the bullet in the drill press chuck and the bit in a vice on the table. With care drilling the first bullet will center the bit which is then secured in place on the table. Putting the bullet in the vice and the bit in the chuck is a fool’s errand and is neither as fast nor as accurate.

Use a relatively slow speed and go slow so as not to overheat and melt the lead. Then you’ll have a mess on your hands.

 

I'm doubtful that you would ever get a lead bullet up to 625 F. by drilling a 1/8" X 1/4" deep hole in the end of a bullet, but I could be wrong!

 

I recovered a 230gr. .54 cal round ball from a deer --- it resembled a nickel; other than leading up your 44, it doesn't seem like there's much to be gained here.

 

I recovered a 230gr. .54 cal round ball from a deer --- it resembled a nickel; other than leading up your 44, it doesn't seem like there's much to be gained here.

I have considered loading a .44 lead roundball for the .44 and may lube it with Lee Alox, but I want to see how the HP work since the velocity of the .44 is not as great as the .54 rifle and soft lead might skid at speeds needed to upset without a patch. Buffalo Bore claims no leading with no GC and at 6-8 bhn.

But it's not like I need the experiment to be practical, just fun without being dangerous.

 

in cast boolits, i used foster hollow points kits and for a revolver/semi pistol, it is not worth it. use either a wide flat nose or a wad cutter and then put your alloy 7 - 10 bhn. i have not used my rifle with cast boolit hp. its either a wfn, lfn and fn.

 

I drilled holes in 373grn 50 Cal Lyman BP/Muzzle-loader cast bullets
Used a cheap drill press, taped the drill bit for consistent depth, held cast bullets with my fingers, did great.
Took a very accurate bullet that would pass through the deer,
to a very accurate bullet that would now expand and punch a quarter-size hole through the heart at 107 yards
Did about 100 of them at the time

 

I've never tried it, nor have I ever thought about doing it. But, I do have a tool that's made to put a hollow point in .22 lr's. It does work, but being able to buy .22 lr hp's by the 500 count bulk packs, I don't use it.

 

back in the day when i was young and dumb, i had a small piece of block steel that i drilled out to accept the 22 lr without the rim and the round nose would go out a little bit. i'd use a bastard file to make it a flat nose bullet. it shot great and it was go to for small game(squirrels and groundhogs).

 

Tdoyka's experience is sound. The flat noses make surprisingly substantial wound channels. Note that Federal has come out with what they call the first personal defense 22 Rimfire. Its bullet is not a hollow point, but a flat point. I have no idea how good it is (I am sticking to my 45 for personal defense) but they will have put some experimental effort into it and compared it to hollow points.

 

to tell you the truth, i could not find cci mini mags (36gr hp) in my stores (there was no interweb thingy!!! ), so i got a piece of steel, cut it and drilled it out. i still have it...........somewhere?😬

when i shot fn at squirrels, groundhogs and a fox or three, you could hear the bullet SMACK into the game. i was 15 or 16yo and i can't remember the damage, but after using fn cast boolits on deer, i'm impressed.

I very much agree with flat point bullets, for everything, except, where overpenetration is a safety concern. Just sayin' when testing in the pool, start the tsunami in the deep end...

i never thought about over penetrating small game. i'd learned fairly quickly that the 22 round noses were for shooting at targets(rocks/bottles/cans...). the round noses would go into the small game and never open up and go out of small game. it was like using fmj.

 

Advertising of English sporting arms and ammo in 1912 are extolling the value of flat nose bullets for African game.
I've shot LBT hard cast in my .41 for many years and never found it lacking in penetration.

Outlaw shooters of fish have used the flat-nosed 25-35 for many years because it penetrates water straight and deep. Any bullet turned backwards in the case does too. Shoot bullets into a swimming pool to find out what works best.

 

I very much agree with flat point bullets, for everything, except, where overpenetration is a safety concern. Just sayin' when testing in the pool, start the tsunami in the deep end...

 

I have heard stories of GIs returning from World War II grinding off the points of full metal jacket .30-06 bullets and drilling them out a little, because there was no expanding bullet ammunition for deer or elk hunting available in the immediate postwar economy.

 

Yeah. The hazard there is the bullets were open base, so if you took enough off the point, firing could just push the core through the jacket and out, spraying all over and leaving the jacket stuck in the bore somewhere. The clue is that no hole appears in the target. I think I read of someone bulging a barrel by shooting a round into one of those stuck jackets.

For 44 Special, you could do a lot worse than just buying full wadcutters for it. They are "pre-expanded" as compared to 32 and some 38 caliber hollow points. I suppose you could also hollow out a wadcutter with an end-cutting ball-end mill and glue a soft round lead ball into it and see if that gets you some expansion. I'd figure the wadcutter was already adequate, and the light ones can be driven pretty fast. The 215-grain hollow base WC could be loaded backward and tested as a hollow point for modest velocities.

Years ago, I read of some tests done with sabots that took a 44 down to 38 and that got pretty impressive velocities and performance, but a quick search isn't turning up any commercially available sabots for this, so you'd have to roll your own on a lathe using Delrin stock or something similar.