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  #11  
Old 01-10-2019, 04:28 AM
Wolfram Malukker Wolfram Malukker is offline
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Like I said above-if I gotta make a reamer, well...it's a few hours to make one. It's tedious, it's critical, and I don't like it much, but it's doable.

I am gonna try to get this .25 cal case annealed and run into the .221 die this week so I can find out if the die base is big enough. If everything works out, I'll measure the brass and then see if I need to cut a reamer to fit-if I do, well, I'll suck it up and do it.
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  #12  
Old 01-10-2019, 02:06 PM
SEM SEM is offline
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I'm located in western Kentucky, The Reason-The-ATF-Exists-State.[/quote]


I'll trade ya moonbeam for moonshine we'll take the ATF and you get the DEMs, think it a fair trade don't ya
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  #13  
Old 01-10-2019, 02:45 PM
Bill K Bill K is offline
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Default First real wildcat, working out forming process ?

I'll trade ya moonbeam for moonshine we'll take the ATF and you get the DEMs, think it a fair trade don't ya [/quote]

Moonbeams gone, now a worse one is in, Newsome. Already going to give illegal immigrants free health care and aid, but re-inact Obama Care and fine legal state citizen's if they don't buy it. This state is just going to hell in a hand basket very fast. End of rant and veering from the OB's thread. Bill K

Last edited by Bill K; 01-10-2019 at 10:45 PM.
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  #14  
Old 01-10-2019, 10:26 PM
Johnly Johnly is offline
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If you want to keep things simple, I have a 256 Winchester Magnum reamer in my collection.
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  #15  
Old 01-11-2019, 06:05 AM
georgeld georgeld is offline
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I found using a D reamer worked better pre drilling close.
Then turning the chuck by hand so it don't over heat and bind up
breaking it off. Lots of cutting oil, and every 3-4 turns pull it out
and clean the chips, and reoil.

I made some dies that worked fairly well with it and all thread 14x7/8ths
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it's about CONTROL!!"
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  #16  
Old 01-11-2019, 06:12 AM
Wolfram Malukker Wolfram Malukker is offline
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I have a stick of B7 7/8-14 all-thread, it's 4140 steel prehardened to about RC25ish. Very similar to chambering a chrome-moly rifle barrel, and will polish to a very high finish.

Tomorrow I'll work on this some more-I am going to go through the bucket of range brass and sort more out, see what else I've got.
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  #17  
Old 01-11-2019, 01:12 PM
JSH JSH is offline
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A couple of us had a brainstorm last year. Wanted a 30-44 mag in a revolver.
I cut an RCBS die off. Man, that thing was harder than woodpecker lips. Pretty much ruined two points on a cutter. HSS would not touch it. I figured it was just on the surface, but most of the way through it was hard.
You have trick for cutting dies off I am all ears.
Jeff
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  #18  
Old 01-11-2019, 03:16 PM
SEM SEM is offline
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cutting dies, I use cut off saw or a angle grinder with a cutting wheel, cuts like butter sort of. saved Lee die lock nuts and stack them jammed together at the cut to provide a square cutting guide and another at the furthest point to support it in line in the vise

forgot, go slow to avoid over heating, let the die cool down cut in stages

Last edited by SEM; 01-11-2019 at 03:22 PM. Reason: more info
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  #19  
Old 01-11-2019, 05:24 PM
Wolfram Malukker Wolfram Malukker is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JSH View Post
A couple of us had a brainstorm last year. Wanted a 30-44 mag in a revolver.
I cut an RCBS die off. Man, that thing was harder than woodpecker lips. Pretty much ruined two points on a cutter. HSS would not touch it. I figured it was just on the surface, but most of the way through it was hard.
You have trick for cutting dies off I am all ears.
Jeff
Pretty easy, the dies are usually high chrome alloy steel, so you use hard tooling, no coolant, and run the lathe at full-tilt-military-maximum-emergency speed.

The chips come off so hot they just burst into flames and burn away, the tool stays cool, and the workpiece stays cool. All the heat comes out in the chip. Its pretty terrifying, but it works well and it's actually industry practice for turning hardened steels up to RC58.

The hard tooling is usually a cermet or ceramic insert, or a polycrystalline diamond insert. I use the cermets, they're leftovers from where I used to work.
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  #20  
Old 01-12-2019, 12:38 AM
Wolfram Malukker Wolfram Malukker is offline
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Dies shortened tonight, need to do a little fine tuning though.

Necking to .30 caliber, then .25, then .22, the case grows a little longer and the neck is very close to being 0.200" long, which was the target.

But, out of 20 cases, NO ANNEALING, I lost two cases in the 3-step neck down, which is exactly the number of cases I lost by skipping the .25 caliber neck and just going from .30 to .22 caliber.

The big kicker is that by going straight from .30 to .22, the case ends up slightly shorter-the shoulder length is the same, but the neck length is shorter, like the brass just got thicker without getting drawn up longer.

So, using a 3-step forming process, the case comes out almost exactly 1.280" long, base to end of neck. With the 2 die process, the cases are 1.260" long. The .020" of length all comes out of the neck area.

The seater die works great, I need to grind in a little softer radius on the entry into the die, although it never scratched a case. This is as far as I went with the first 40 out of 45 cases.



The sizer die, however, needs some more work. It needs to be *slightly* enlarged on the end, as even with a soft radius it's shaving brass as we get down to the case head area. If I just let it push the brass down, it'll shave it off. If I slowly work the brass down, it pushes a 0.050" tall belt onto the case!

I filed the sharp shaved edge of brass off on this case-but you can see the "belt", if only the focus on my phone camera was better.



I could turn the rims to the belt diameter, cut a slightly deeper extractor groove, and have a "belted magnum"! While nifty looking, and a great idea considering the "magnum" on the case head, it wasn't the goal-so now I gotta rework the die a bit to make it stop that.

So, in order to get the "best" case, I will need to make a .25 cal necking die, grind a bit less taper into the sizing die, and decide if the neck length I am getting is good enough.

The dimensions that the die produces SO FAR, are:



Polishing out the die a bit to get that .376" base dimension correct won't take very long with a 240grit stone, but I'll have to polish the die again after grinding.

Last edited by Wolfram Malukker; 01-12-2019 at 12:58 AM.
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