had a Winchester 1892 SRC action kicking about for a bit - rebarreled it, made a stock (walnut burl), waiting on a few non essential parts from homestead, Had Nick at vulcan clean it up and do some micro welding to fill up some pitting - if it shoots well it's off to Nova Scotia for some case colour hardening if not ... I'll rust blue it. I will probably checker it too - want to do some skip-line checkering on it. been tinkering with some inlay ideas, but not sure it would fit....
25-20 Win Seating Die
- Thread starter musgy
- Start date
had a Winchester 1892 SRC action kicking about for a bit - rebarreled it, made a stock (walnut burl), waiting on a few non essential parts from homestead, Had Nick at vulcan clean it up and do some micro welding to fill up some pitting - if it shoots well it's off to Nova Scotia for some case colour hardening if not ... I'll rust blue it. I will probably checker it too - want to do some skip-line checkering on it. been tinkering with some inlay ideas, but not sure it would fit....
Sounds like another game plan coming together.
Thanks for sharing ...
I'm still obsessing with 32-20, but eventually will have it resolved.
My problem is I like to fix things till they break and not looking forward to neck sizing soft thin wall brass casings.
Eventually I will figure it out.
Rob
Thanks for sharing ...
I'm still obsessing with 32-20, but eventually will have it resolved.
My problem is I like to fix things till they break and not looking forward to neck sizing soft thin wall brass casings.
Eventually I will figure it out.
Rob
I had the same issues with .44-40, real thin walled, I lose a couple cases every session, so long as you are good with that.....
I also found that backing off the seating die several turns helped (enormously)
My brass & bullets should show up this week - will post on how it goes.
ok - so a lot more issues than expected.. bullets and brass showed up today. tried resizing a couple. complete failure, I got one case out of 10 - even that one looks like it may be cracked a bit.
- lubed them all with Lee dry lube, inside the neck as well
- ran one through the press - crinkled the neck... useless
- annealed another and ran it through slowly, again - ruined
- annealed another ran it through in stages, saw it starting to crinkle on one side, rotated it 90^ ran it in a bit more examined, rotated, ram... about 4-5x ... that is the one that lived.
Thought I had it, ammaled 4 or 5 more all the necks crinkled no matter how slow I went or how many times I rotated the case ....
I think the one that lived did not get as much heat as the others .... think there must be a sweet spot in there.
Dunno, how has everyone's success been with the trim die?
OH - also (probably important) these are nickel plated cases..... all they had.
- lubed them all with Lee dry lube, inside the neck as well
- ran one through the press - crinkled the neck... useless
- annealed another and ran it through slowly, again - ruined
- annealed another ran it through in stages, saw it starting to crinkle on one side, rotated it 90^ ran it in a bit more examined, rotated, ram... about 4-5x ... that is the one that lived.
Thought I had it, ammaled 4 or 5 more all the necks crinkled no matter how slow I went or how many times I rotated the case ....
I think the one that lived did not get as much heat as the others .... think there must be a sweet spot in there.
Dunno, how has everyone's success been with the trim die?
OH - also (probably important) these are nickel plated cases..... all they had.
well..... I resized them. not so great - lost 30 cases before I got it figured out., (glad I bought 200) I had to:
- anneal them, I found heating to a dull red glow and quenching in water. too bright and they would just collapse
- lube really well inside the mouth and out.
- could not run them through the die in one pass, had to run them in until I felt resistance, withdraw it a bit rotate it a bit back in till resistance is met.... repeat probably 15-20x per case. basically resizing it by 0.5mm at a time removing and inspecting periodically
- dies must be CLEEEEAAANNN don't let lube build up in there
lost about 20 cases before I had that down then about 1 in 10 after that anyway. (1 in 10 is an acceptable loss to me)
The 2 biggest culprits I found:
"Uneven annealing" - probably a better method than "propane torch" is required
"Variations in case mouth" - ANY sort of variation in the case mouth caused problems, burrs, high spots and dents need to be fixed - dents are the worst, try to resize one with a dent and forget it. splits every time.
So I think trimming, deburring, chamfering and making sure the case mouth is concentric is probably the most important thing to do.
Not sure if my issues had anything to do with the nickel plating, but it is what it is.
- anneal them, I found heating to a dull red glow and quenching in water. too bright and they would just collapse
- lube really well inside the mouth and out.
- could not run them through the die in one pass, had to run them in until I felt resistance, withdraw it a bit rotate it a bit back in till resistance is met.... repeat probably 15-20x per case. basically resizing it by 0.5mm at a time removing and inspecting periodically
- dies must be CLEEEEAAANNN don't let lube build up in there
lost about 20 cases before I had that down then about 1 in 10 after that anyway. (1 in 10 is an acceptable loss to me)
The 2 biggest culprits I found:
"Uneven annealing" - probably a better method than "propane torch" is required
"Variations in case mouth" - ANY sort of variation in the case mouth caused problems, burrs, high spots and dents need to be fixed - dents are the worst, try to resize one with a dent and forget it. splits every time.
So I think trimming, deburring, chamfering and making sure the case mouth is concentric is probably the most important thing to do.
Not sure if my issues had anything to do with the nickel plating, but it is what it is.
Had mine out at the range today with 8 grains of 2400 behind an 85 grain lead bullet and CCI 400 primer.... was mostly fine, but I got a few where there was excessive gas escaping around the primer and one that completely blew the primer out... that particular shot also made a particularly (very noticable) loud bang - I gave up after that as I was having issues with the gun.
Also - after resizing my cases I think the trim die is required - I lost too many cases - and the universal expander is also needed, my home 'plumb bob' work mostly, but if the rim isn't evenly flared the bullet will try to can't to one side or another.
