Case Forming

Seeing Jimmy's post on 7mm Mauser got me remembering how hard it was to get quantities of military cases that were boxer primed! Winchester made and listed 8mm and 7mm Mauser cases and ammo, but if you tried to order 1000 or 2000, nobody had more than one or two hundred in stock!

A Class III dealer friend of mine had a MG34 and a MG42 as well as a 1919A4 and a M60. Then on 4th of July, he likes to shoot them for a Sounds of Freedom Fest. So in the early 80's he commissioned me to reform 2000 8x57 brass from 30-06 fired cases. He supplied the 30-06 and "paid" me 6 cents each to form and trim them. I didn't get any cash, just credit in his shop! I ordered a RCBS "Form & Trim" die. This sized and pushed the shoulder back far enough, that trimming to 57mm left a small lip in the case mouth. He would then load the cases on a Dillon 1000, with a neck size die (that also deprimed them) and the press swaged the primer crimps out.

I was looking in my 8x57 die box the other day, and the Trim die is still in there, I used to make 7x57 brass from 30-06 military fired brass for myself by forming 8 x57 then sizing in a FL 7x57 die and trimming to 57mm length. That is 6mm's (over 1/4") of case neck that had to come off. I used a Forrester "Original" case trimmer, but instead of a 7mm pilot, I used a 7mm neck ream to thin the neck wall! Remove primer crimp, & load as normal! I drill powered all these.

Now it's almost 40 years later, and I wanted 300 Blackout Brass, I pulled out the equipment and went to town. I did over 800 cases over the last winter. I am so sick of trimming cases, I have put off a project I really want to do...

I have a Siamese Mauser in 8x52 Siamese. No ammo has been available since before WWII! I recently found out, I can make brass for that gun by taking 7.62x54 Russian (Mauser "A" rim) and expand the neck to 8mm (.323") and trim to 52mm Load to fire form, and now you have brass for a Siamese Mauser.

I have made 30 Mauser from 223 cases, as well as 300 Blackout and 7mm TCU, but I am getting so tired of case trimming!

I have less than 200 7.62x54 Russian so this project shouldn't be too taxing!

What other cartridge cases do you make from common brass?

Ivan

Need to make some 300 Savage,going to try using 308 Winchester brass.

vonn said:

Need to make some 300 Savage,going to try using 308 Winchester brass.

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Have done it for years. But I recommend not using Federal brass. GI, Rem, and WW work fine.

I form for at least 15 oddball/scarce caliber cases. Including 7x57 and .300 Savage.

How do you handle the brass now no longer being what the headstamp says?

I am smart enough to know what each cartridge looks like.

Racer X said:

How do you handle the brass now no longer being what the headstamp says?

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You hopefully have ammo boxs with the correct Cal. on it or.....

or you print out labes on your PC and scotch tape them to the flap of the ammo boxs..........

and you don't let anyone else use your ammo !!

My 6x284 brass either says 284 Winchester or 6.5x284. My friends and I never have a problem with ammo ID! My 6mm PPC and 22 BR brass are made from something else and (almost) always have been.

Is it any worse to have several different cartridges that say Mauser A Basic? I have 3 that use that: 7.62x54R Russian, 8x52R Siamese, & 8x56R Hungarian. (I'm still looking for a good 11mm Mauser and a 8x50R Austian, both of those use Mauser A brass) Military headstamps don't say what the cartridge is! The military ammo expects you to use some basic common sense. I guess I do too.

Ivan

BTW, I have also intentionally fired .300 Sav in a .308 chamber. No ill effects. The cases are dimensionally very similar except for neck length.

Ivan the Butcher said:

Military headstamps don't say what the cartridge is! The military ammo expects you to use some basic common sense. I guess I do too.

Ivan

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Dad's .30-06 black tip bring home ammo from when he was a range master at Ft Lewis in the '50s is labeled. It was far easier to make it disappear than check it back in.

And my next door neighbor's .30 Luger WW I ammo for his WW I Artillery Luger is marked. Just saying. Has the drum mag and rifle stock.

I was sincerely asking because at least SOME is marked.

I used to make . . .

300 Weatherby from 300 H&H, but that was just fireforming

357/44 Bain & Davis is formed from 44 Magnum

357/45 Grizzly Winchester Magnum is formed from 45 Winchester Magnum

356TSW can be made from 223

357 AutoMag and 44 AutoMag are formed from .308 Winchester

475 Wildey Magnum is formed from .284 Winchester

I can't think of the others at the moment

These days most of this is availble from commercial suppliers and we no longer have to form our own

Offhand I can think of very little military small arms ammo of any nation having a caliber as part of the headstamp. Usually only an arsenal symbol and a date.

DWalt said:

I am smart enough to know what each cartridge looks like.

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Some of us older reloaders were taught to use something our parents and elders taught us to use ...
it was known as Common Sense and Caution .
You were even expected to look both ways before you crossed a street ...
Responsibility for your actions was also stressed ... You were expected to THINK !
Gary

In the 1970s I made a thousand 7.92x33 Kurz for a buddy of mine who was a class 3 collector. Cases were made from once-fired 7.62 NATO WRA 67 brass using an RCBS case conversion set of tools which my buddy bought. (At the time the die set was rather expensive – around $250 if I remember correctly). The brass went through a forming die, the excess neck was cut off with a hack saw and fine file in a trim die, then every case was neck-reamed with a reamer held in a tap handle. Loading the ammunition was done in a conventional 2-die RCBS set. A load was worked up with IMR 4198 and a 125 grain spitzer bullet. It worked well in the rifle but I’m glad I didn’t have to make another batch. I don’t know which was worse, forming and trimming the cases or doing the neck reaming. I was given a real nice M1903A3 in exchange for my labor and eventually was given the RCBS die set too.

Also made 7.65X54 Mauser and 7.7 Japanese from 30-06 brass (pretty common conversions) and made 6.5 Arisaka brass from .35 Remington cases. The 6.5 Arisaka brass comes up a little short in the neck but loads and shoots fine. Tried making 7.5 MAS from 30-06 but wasn’t happy with the outcome – I think the chamber in my MAS 36 is oversize.

Made some .30 Lugar and .30 Mauser just to see if it could be done but there was never a shortage of the factory brass in my brass stash so it wasn’t worth messing with.

My case forming venture began back around the mid-1960s with the 6.5x55 Swede, made from .30-06 brass. Base was a bit small but it worked OK. It later grew to include .43 Mauser, 7.5 Swiss, 8mm Kropatchek, 7.7 Jap, .45-75, all the Remington autoloading cartrides, 8mm Siamese, 7mm and 8mm Mauser, .35 Winchester, .300 Savage, .303 Savage, and several others. All because I was enamored with guns in uncommon calibers.

For those similarly interested, Donnelley’s book, The Handloader’s Manual of Cartridge Conversions, is highly recommended.

Before it was available from Graf's I formed 7.7 Arisaka cases from . 30-06. Technically a no-no because the base is slightly smaller on the 06, but I never noticed a problem.

Also started playing with a . 38-45 Clerke a few years back. Thats a . 45 ACP necked down to. 38 caliber.

tndrfttom said:

the excess neck was cut off with a hack saw and fine file in a trim die, then every case was neck-reamed with a reamer held in a tap handle.

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I have some RCBS ream dies as well as file to trim dies. The Drill powered Forrester case trimmer with a ream for a pilot cuts out 90 to 95% of the time for that! I did buy a table top band-saw to cut off really long necks, that sped the trimming process too!

I have seen the 8x33 from 308 conversions before, but never had a weapon that used that round.

In the early 80's 7.62x39 Russian ammo was unheard of, so we made brass from Norma brand 6.5 Carcano or 6.5x54 MS. That is about a 3/4" of neck to remove!

With modern equipment, I would rather ream the inside of a neck, than turn the outside of one any day! But if you have a rifle or XP-100 in one of the Bench Rest calibers, you end up turning the outside to get the proper .010" Neck thickness. (Savage target rifles use the "Norma" Chambers with full neck wall thickness of .015") My Sako 6mm PPC (last Varminter they built!) uses .015 necks with only .002 or .003" of expansion and groups 62 grain Head Hunters in the "O's" at 100 yards. I was very lucky on that!

Ivan

Ivan the Butcher said:

In the early 80's 7.62x39 Russian ammo was unheard of, so we made brass from Norma brand 6.5 Carcano or 6.5x54 MS. That is about a 3/4" of neck to remove!



Ivan

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The first 7.62X39 I messed with was in the early 1970s. The rifle was a very beat-down SKS that belonged to a friend that had purchased the SKS from a returning Viet Nam GI. At that time ammo, either surplus or commercial, was just non-existent in the US. Somehow the owner of the rifle located some 'custom-made' ammo made out of surplus GI 7.35 mm Italian Carcano. The cases had been reformed and the original .300 diameter Italian bullets had been seated in the case. Needless to say firing a .300 bullet down a roached-out .312 bore produced nothing but keyholes on the target. The first "real" 7.62x39 I saw imported was marked "7.62 Short". It came from Lapua in 20 round orange and yellow boxes but was berdan primed so that didn't help us reloaders. It arrived about the same time Valmets were imported.