455 brass, and substitutions for it
- Thread starter infidel29
- Start date
rustywoodtc
Expired Business Member
- Location
- Mission, BC, CANADA
Guys,
The 455 WEBLEY brass we are getting from BERTRAM is MK II style. Bruce Bertram is an awesome guy and he makes very high quality brass, so high quality that he is making 338 LAPUA for the US Army sniper program and factory production is booked out 6 months just to fill that order.
The cost of BERTRAM brass reflects the whole package - High Australian material costs, high quality brass, rare calibers, export permits from Australian defense department, high shipping costs from Australia, import duty charged by Canada Customs, import documentation and brokerage, the list goes on & on.
As infidel29 said, reality is that "it is what it is" since most if not all other sources of 455 Webley brass has dried up. You simply cannot compare prices to brass like 45 Colt since there are huge volume economies of scale. When STARLINE makes 2 million pieces of 45 Colt in a weeks production and cannot keep up with current demand the price is going to lower than making 455 brass in 100,000 piece lots and sitting on them in a warehouse until they sell off eventually.
The great news is that we can still get correctly head-stamped brass for some of our "old girls" we want to take out and shoot. If it were not for small boutique manufactures like Bertram millions of antiques would be relegated to wall hangers. Besides those antiques are selling in the range of $2500 to $5000 ! Now you wanna cry that you have to spend $100 or $200 on brass cases to shoot it, really ? ? ? Give me a break fellas, you can reload those cases many times you know.
Peter
The 455 WEBLEY brass we are getting from BERTRAM is MK II style. Bruce Bertram is an awesome guy and he makes very high quality brass, so high quality that he is making 338 LAPUA for the US Army sniper program and factory production is booked out 6 months just to fill that order.
The cost of BERTRAM brass reflects the whole package - High Australian material costs, high quality brass, rare calibers, export permits from Australian defense department, high shipping costs from Australia, import duty charged by Canada Customs, import documentation and brokerage, the list goes on & on.
As infidel29 said, reality is that "it is what it is" since most if not all other sources of 455 Webley brass has dried up. You simply cannot compare prices to brass like 45 Colt since there are huge volume economies of scale. When STARLINE makes 2 million pieces of 45 Colt in a weeks production and cannot keep up with current demand the price is going to lower than making 455 brass in 100,000 piece lots and sitting on them in a warehouse until they sell off eventually.
The great news is that we can still get correctly head-stamped brass for some of our "old girls" we want to take out and shoot. If it were not for small boutique manufactures like Bertram millions of antiques would be relegated to wall hangers. Besides those antiques are selling in the range of $2500 to $5000 ! Now you wanna cry that you have to spend $100 or $200 on brass cases to shoot it, really ? ? ? Give me a break fellas, you can reload those cases many times you know.
Peter
Basically, it means you squash the brass in between two things that are harder than the brass, to change it's shape without cutting it.
In this case, it can be as simple as a hole drilled in a piece of bar stock, and a flat plate to cover it. You need a pretty decent amount of pressure, more than you would usually want to apply with a reloading press that you wanted to keep for long. But like as not, with some careful adjustment you could use one. Not a pot metal one, mind.
Cheers
Trev
Actually I've never been a big fan of bertram brass. The stuff I've had was not great. If I'm paying $2 a case i kind of hope for quality at least equal to run-of-the-mill winchester or remington. Maybe bertram got there problems sorted out and this 455 MKII brass is great stuff, but I'll just keep making mine from 45 brass.
I'm not a big fan of the MKII case anyway - too bad Bertram didn't make it in the 455 MKI or 455 Colt/Eley format, which is far superior ballistically and safer to boot in old guns. Now that would have been brass worth buying.
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cory moffat
Member
- Location
- Chief Lake Prince George BC
My 450/455 WG Target will only chamber the Mk2 Brass. Mk1 is too long.
The 450/455 guns are like that. Basically it's a 450 cylinder. 455 MKII will chamber in quite a few of the 450 Adams chambered revolvers, especially the Belgian guns.
Still would have been nice if somebody made MKI brass - it's easy to trim brass that's too long but it's harder to stretch brass that is too short.
The MKI is just better all-round for most of our guns - less pressure at the same velocity, or better velocity at the same pressure. Also it is much less likely to induce the pressure spikes from compressed powder that are a very real possibility in the shorter brass. Pistol powders like Unique and Trailboss can do some nasty stuff when they get compressed. The guys shooting the webley revolvers converted to .45acp already have those advantages, be nice if those of us with unaltered 455 webleys could do the same thing. I think I see a winter project ahead - making a run of .455 Webley MKI brass from Colt 45 brass.
cory moffat
Member
- Location
- Chief Lake Prince George BC
I will be looking for some of your fancy looking bullets this winter Jet.
I think places like star line need fairly high production levels (possibly 100,000) pieces before they will retool their machines for a run, otherwise the costs outweigh the benefits for them. At least, thats what one of my buddies was told when he was designing his own firearm for production. Brass may be different than gun parts, however, but the end thinking would stand to reason that it'd be the same.
