Trimming leverevoluton 45-70 casings?

scar2112

scar2112

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Reloading hornady FTX into all the casings I have from leverevolution ammo, Am seating with a hornady seating die, using the stem that was in it. Works like a charm, I dont see it damaging the bullets tip at all, actually seating is smoother than the 350gr after I expand the shorter cases.
One small problem I may have run into is...how the heck do I trim these buggers once they reach max length? My lee case length gauge is too long for these casings so it will not be able to trim them down to the required shorter length. Is there some kind of special case length gauge that I need to order how do I go about this? I am still many reloads away...I have 5 boxes of casings so I am a long ways away from resizing them at the moment.
 
You could buy a lathe type trimmer, or simply trim the end of the pin on your lee case trimmer to make it shorter. I would file it now since your cases are the right length.File off a little and try to see if still too long repeat until the cutter just touches your cases. Buy another for standard cases.
 
If it was me, i'd try to seat the bulled to match the correct overall length, and leave it at that. I've never had any problems with cases that were too short, just had to set them aside for the end of the batch and readjust the crimp die.
 
iceman2 said:
You could buy a lathe type trimmer, or simply trim the end of the pin on your lee case trimmer to make it shorter. I would file it now since your cases are the right length.File off a little and try to see if still too long repeat until the cutter just touches your cases. Buy another for standard cases.
Click to expand...
Plan to leave some of the boxes of once fired for later, so I will order another trimmer and do just that then. At the moment I am just loading 3-5 bullets at a time, working my way up the chart. So I have just been playing with 1 box of casings.

If it was me, i'd try to seat the bulled to match the correct overall length, and leave it at that. I've never had any problems with cases that were too short, just had to set them aside for the end of the batch and readjust the crimp die.
Click to expand...
Having no problems seating to the proper COL, just it would be an issue when the casings get too long. I ordered the hornady die so I would be able to get a crimp on these as well, works great...I leave it set to the length of the leverevolution and use my lee for full length reloads.
 
I thought to myself that it would take quite a few firings for the brass to reach normal max OAL. The brass is already quite shorter than normal brass because of the length of the LE bullets. I stood one of each kind of brass next to each other, and there was a significant difference. I'd say the head will fail before you stretch the OAL into danger area.
 
Leverevelution cases are a bit shorter than normal, and since straight wall cartridges don't normally lengthen with repeated resizing the way bottle neck cases do, I can't see you having a problem with trimming, unless case mouth cracks develop that need to be cleaned up. A laith type trimmer works as well as any, the Lee trimmer works too, I think they make it in .45/70.
 
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