Seems to be much talk regarding 350RM brass availability and cost so here's an option for some fellow 350 enthusiasts.
It's pouring rain here this evening in the South Cariboo, the bush is full of all the long weekend warriors from out of town trying to shoot their dink,so, might as well hide out in the shop and make some 350 brass!
The majority of the following info was gleaned off the interweb with much trial and error on my part but I finally got it down to a reliable end product I was happy with.
Only special tool needed is the trim/form die and possibly an outside neck trimmer. Mine is an ancient RCBS one which I can't say for sure is still in production, but as was mentioned in an earlier post Redding currently produces trim/form die for 50-60$ bucks that will work just as well.
7mm Rem Mag brass forms the best with the least amount of steps. 300 Win Mag as well as .338 Win Mag will both need to be outside neck-turned but will work just fine as well.
Lots of lube on the case...gently and slowly into the form/trim die,trim the excess length and all of a sudden you have something that kind of resembles a .350RM case.
Annealing is next...it's one of those things that is really quite simple once you practice a little, I would recommend going to
varmintal.com for a great tutorial,spend an afternoon practicing on some old range pick-up brass.
Apply more lube, run through your FL sizer die as you normally would, chamfer and de-burr.
Factory Chamber sizes can vary within SAAMI specs quite a bit so you may need to outside neck-turn or you might not. The current Model Seven I have now is good to go on 7mm RM with no need to turn...your particular rifle may need the extra step.
I then load the case with a cheaper hornady 200gr Interlock with a starting load of whichever ball powder I feel like that day and take my Model Seven along to the range with me next session and have some fun with it. Those cases are now fire-formed and ready for my go-to hunting load of Ramshot TAC with a 200gr TSX on top.
I find I will usually get 3 full power loads before the necks split, and in all honesty the three Model Sevens chambered in 350 that I have owned were all the same...3 to 4 firings and FL re-sizing and even with fresh factory brass and the necks start to split...long case life is just not in the cards for the 350 in my experience.
The amount of typing I just did makes it look as if this is a time consuming endeavor when in reality it is not.
I can usually do about 25-30 cases in an evening session and that keeps me shooting for a good while, along with the warm and fuzzy feeling of using simple range pick-up 7mm RM.
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