I’ve went one round with this topic once already but I’m changing things up a little and including some sketches and ideas that have developed. I’m hoping to inspire others to make tooling and play the game. This may sound a little bold or arrogant but until one has shot a target such as this and measured the actual distance from center, a center mark that you placed, accuracy takes on an entirely different meaning.
(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links) The Bottle Cap Match game in some parts of the country is still very active and the interest I’m hearing in my locale is motivating me to do something about it. In a haphazard condition I’ve made a slight variance to the original game but nothing I’m going to lose sleep over – the original discs sound like they were 1.65” diameter or so, mine came out to be 1.604” diameter. I believe this variance was caused by a measurement I made on the measuring device from an original kit. The table, or platen that the shot disc is placed on to measure the hole’s distance from center, had a diameter of 1.604”. To get a true zero for the original setting, it made sense to make the discs this same exact size so that’s my reasoning for the disc discrepancies. My first punch and die set I made produced a .042” thick disc, 1.604” diameter, as did my second set. So now, the future punch and die sets aren’t going to wander from those dimensions. The measuring devices I’m making are all getting the same size platens also.
I made the first die to fit an older Lachmiller reloading press. This was a C-frame design that I have had kicking around my mess with no real intended purpose. The bore on the top had a bushing in it to accept a 7/8” die body but when I removed the bushing, the opening was a 1.25”-18 thread. I thought this would work nice as the stem on the punch then could be hefty. It works well but probably overkill. The next die set I made to fit a RCBS Rock chucker, with the threaded bushing removed. That’s a 1.25”-12 thread condition – still plenty of room for the stem on a punch. My first couple of dies were made all one piece, a slot for the card stock – cut with a slitting saw. Not a terribly difficult operation, but definitely not as simple as the next version. On the third punch, I decided to make a ring that was removeable, could be re-sharpened or replaced.