Post by ivan on Jul 2, 2022 12:30:10 GMT -5
Been fighting with making 300bo brass from 223. First I thought I had a goldmine in a few hundred once fired Wolf Gold cases. Turns out neck area ends up too thick, so without adding more equipment and time to turn 'em to proper diameter I can't use 'em. Fortunately I'm feeding a bolt gun so I only cut/formed 50 before discovering that and hadn't primed/loaded any of 'em (I was doing final measurement checks before getting the hand primer out).
So.. sort thru a bunch of my other "once fired, de-primed and primer pocket reamed" 223/556 brass and come up with 100 PMC or Hornady cases, both on the "OK to use" list for thickness in what becomes the neck. Chop 'em, form 'em, trim and deburr and chamfer 'em, and they pass all measurements. Cool. I'll whip out 50 and see what they do... But first lemme resize these 15 range pickup cases I found.
First one neck crumpled and then broke off around the expanding plug. Can't get plug/rod out of die, can't unscrew plug from rod. Good thing I have the 2" chop saw for doing the 300 brass... also good I can get a package of 2 replacements from Hornady for dirt cheap, relatively speaking.
Ok... So instead I finally got 100 rounds of brass case 762x39 fired from my bolt gun. Got my 5744 and 1680 and .310 bullets and ready to roll. Run 'em thru the dedicated de-priming die, no problem. Visual inspection, all good. First case, and the de-capping pin is impacting the brass on the inside and not letting it enter the neck area of the resizing die. As a bonus, it seems the flash hole is just a tad tight and so the pin is now stuck in the hole, which drags the whole rod down thru the die (Hornady "zip die" thingies) when I lower the ram on the press. OK, bring ram back up, shove zip die rod back up above everything, get a BFW (big .... wrench) with a hole in the handle, put some pressure on the zip rod, and give the press arm a good thwack. And out it comes, no worries. Unfortunately, my zip rod is now bent. Did I already mention I can get a package of 2 replacements relatively cheap?
Finally got some reloading success when a coworker was lamenting the lack of his favorite 125gr low recoil 30-06 loads on the store shelves. Since I have 125gr 308 soft points and hollow points for my 300bo, I borrowed some '06 dies and brass from a buddy and now I've got 2 boxes waiting for a day we can hit the range.