Let me start out by saying that it is not my intent to convince anybody else to do this. I don't even know whether I will do this for any length of time but that is the point. From the minute that we all sat down with some powder, lead and explosive primers we did something else: we said that we assumed responsibility for everything that we did. Unlike the masses that buy a box of factory loaded ammo, we decided that we were responsible enough to assess a situation and make up our mind that it was or was not safe to proceed.
We do things everyday now that started out as concepts a long time ago and then became "accepted". And I think that one of the BEST things that a forum like this does is to put those ideas out for peer review. I have never known any idea that did not profit from the intelligent consideration of others which resulted in a better, revised idea.
I remember reading something about a guy needing some lead boolits and so he drilled a hole in a piece of wood and was off to the races. I cringed a little bit but.....I guess it worked out OK because he was writing about it! But I would not do it except after WW III in the post-apocalyptic world of Mel Gibson.....
Having said all of that, I apologize for the picture quality but I just set up and took this picture to post this answer.
How much lead do you displace when you "size something down" a couple thousand ths? The gas check isn't that thick and I have the advantage of having been able to look very closely at the "swaged" boolit before the lube and gas check went on. If I had seen signs of distress then I would just have had a nice alternative to my kinetic bullet puller and not a potential gas check tool.
But the lead did not look any more distressed than from any of the other things I do to that lead before I subject it to heat and roiling gases and push it down the barrel at sub- and super-sonic speeds.
If you look at this particular Lee 240 grain 44 boolit, you can see the lube grooves that I used as a guide for how deeply to seat the boolit in the collet. It is actually very repeatable; especially if you use a C clip in that groove to act as a "stop" to always stop the boolit at the edge of that lube groove.
Please do not do this if it seems like a bad idea to you. But there is a wealth of knowledge here, at the Firingline, that I look forward to hearing from and the best thing is that the advice will be
free. I would have to pay some fancy consultant a fortune to get this kind of advice elsewhere!
I'll load up a few and turn my head away
and pull the trigger and let you know what happens! If'n y'all don't hear from me in a couple of weeks then I would definitely shelve this here idear.......