Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles Fireball Brass for Skinflints

Flash, I finally got around to hitting your link. Enjoyed it considerably.
My process is more brutish, with cheaper tools, more powered steps versus hand work, and I annealed before the fun started.
But yeah....

Another note.
Just before winter bit for good, I went out for a quick shoot with the FC brass. I had 20 rounds loaded, sorted into ugly and pretty concentric.
Got up to the range just in time for a snow squall, probably 2 inches per hour. Then the squall went away, dead nuts calm with a few flakes straight down.
Sighted in starting with the uglies, had enough for three groups on the record paper. Had one bad flyer that wrecked a one-hole group, but the case came out fine, average aggregate with that flyer was about .850. Would definitely work on gophers.
Problem was neck splits, shoulder pops, et cetera. Survivors fireformed nicely.
The post-shot FC cull rate was 25 percent, for PMC only 8 percent. Kind of disappointing that so many necks split after all that work, including annealing.
Between the two types, the FC took significantly greater force in sizing compared to the PMC. I have not sectioned a case yet, but probably will now for better understanding.

Glad you read the link. I like to use military 223 brass because it lets me turn the necks to a uniform thickness. I'm at the max neck thickness my gun can tolerate. That may help me a bit with reduced neck splits. I get very high yeilds from my reforms. The losses seem to occur most at the initial sizing step when the case comes out of the die looking like a long neck beer bottle. The neck will crease or the shoulder will collapse. I did not get high yeilds when reforming commercial 223 brass. The commercial Remington and Winchester cases I reform do not require neck turning but they seem prone to split necks.

Another update. We're not having winter, so I sneaked up to the range for a few quick groups and trigger time. Aside from the sinking feeling I need to re-do all my 22BR loads, I fired some more of the Federal, 35 and 40 VMs over the same charge of Blue Dot. Ten rounds, two groups of five.
35s went .544; the 40s (which the barrel likes best) went .455.
But out of ten shots fired, I got four more culls.
I guess I'll shoot the rest up either on sneak sessions, or spend them on gophers this spring and see how many cases I have left. If I have fifty left out of the original hundred, I frankly will be surprised.
Will try sizing ten after I'm shot through -- if any more die, I will anneal ten more and then size those, just to see what the final cull on this will be. But for now, if you want to do this experiment, don't bother with Federal brass.

Therapy for all you eccentric skinflints on this thread......... http://www.nosler.com/New-Products.aspx


PLOTBOSS

That's not therapy, that's sticker electroshock.

Skinflint...............grin!


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