Lee Loader

FWIW I have never found consistent length of fired brass in any cartridge and no matter if once fired from my guns or bought/traded/bartered for with questionable history.

You should see the spread I got in a lot of previously enjoyed .32-20 brass.

LC 5.56 military from a range all over the map.

9mm doesn't even seem to be made in spec.

I've got bags of .38S and .357 that range from very short to very long.

Maybe my expected specs are too tight.

GasGuzzler I see the same thing with LC 308 Win cases. Some as mush as 20 thousands difference.

mr surveyor wrote:I'm sure I'll have to start paying closer attention to detail measuring and sorting the brass if for no other reason than for seating and crimping accuracy, but now I'm wondering if the*/- 0.08 shortage of case neck could cause a pressure problem in my "less than maximum" load level?

I think you mean -.008" shorter and no, It is not going to make a bit of difference. The SAAMI spec on just about all rifle brass is the Max Length +.000"/ -.020", and this would have been accounted for with any published data provided by a SAAMI member.

It would not matter if your brass was .08" shorter as long as you maintained the published data COAL because the bullet body has not reduced the useful case capacity any further than it already has in the published data. In that, I work with cases of a known volume and my reloading software has the ability to "image" stuff like this it makes it easy to illustrate. Let's use one of my cartridges with it's know specs as an example.
My brass length is 2.013" for this lot, with a case volume of 45.9 grains of H₂O. If I shorten the case length by .08", to 1.933" I have reduced the case volume to 44.4 grains. This change is easy to calculate as you are working with the change to the volume of a cylinder (the length change and diameter of the case neck). The original case has a volume of 2.97 cc and the trimmed case 2.87 cc but in that the original COAL was maintained with the trimmed case, the usable case capacity (from the base of the seated bullet to the web of the case, has not changed (2.38 cc). The 30-grain charge, in either case, is 91% of the usable capacity and the pressure and velocity this load generates from either cartridge will be the same. As long as you maintain the COAL of the published data, shorter cases will not be a problem.

Shorten the COAL on either case and all hell will break loose.

I see guys sort cases by all kinds of methods, but the only one that matters is a sort by volume of the case. Some reloaders sort cases by weight and this is what they are, in a nutshell, trying to accomplish. Cases of the same length and weight should have the same interior depth which means they are the same volume. Controlling the volume of the combustion chamber uniforms the pressure at the boom just as much as uniforming the charge does.

Would the pressure be slightly lower on the short case with same COAL and same charge due to less surface area of neck tension? If so it would be very slight I'm guessing.

FWIW I load 9mm copper plated "too long" (COAL) and add just a bit more powder by percentage because they fit in the magazine and shoot better in my P95. Some people would never try that but....

yep, I meant .008" shortage ... I'll blame the misque of fat fingering and dain bramage


jd

GasGuzzler wrote:Would the pressure be slightly lower on the short case with same COAL and same charge due to less surface area of neck tension? If so it would be very slight I'm guessing.

Good point. QuickLoad suggests the same but it is a mere 15 PSI. 40,902 PSI for the shorter case and 40,917 for the longer case. Velocity for both estimated at 2101 FPS at 70º.

mr surveyor wrote:yep, I meant .008" shortage ... I'll blame the misque of fat fingering and dain bramage

I year hou DJ!

Finally got around to trimming the remainder of the .30-30 I shot a month ago. Had 20 Federals and five Winchesters that were all OEM before I used them. I had already decapped them, neck sized them, and tumbled them. I put the Feds back in their original box with a label stating they were ready to go. I looked at the 5 Winnies and decided they needed loaded. So I put 11.0 grains UU (useless unique) in each and seated at the same depth of the 10s I made a couple weeks ago.

I also trimmed the .223Rem I shot that day and started in on the few 9mm too.....more on those in a different topic.

100 rnds 40-65 WCF, 400 gr Lyman bullet, 60 grain Goex 2F, Fed LRM, Starline cases.

Gonna, make some smoke,

It's a batch of 270 Win and a batch of 32 Win Spl.

Great fun!

Bayou

bayou wrote:It's a batch of 270 Win and a batch of 32 Win Spl.

Great fun!

Bayou

What bullet are you using with the 32 Win Spl?[hr][hr]Last week I cranked out another box of 20 for my M94 Timber Carbine 30-30 Win. One of my stepsons, a shooter, really took a liking to the rifle. He killed two hogs with it in two days.

I like the way I'm loading my ammunition now, keeping no more than a box of rifle stuff on the shelf. It is not piled up all over the place, and if at some point I want to change up a component, I don't have a bunch sitting around that I'm not interested in shooting. In this case, there were 18 in the box, he went and shot them up, so I loaded another 23. I wanted him to shoot another of the fresh cartridge from this production run, and I figured he would kill a hog a day for the remainder of his stay.

Nothing to reloading: Turret on the press, load specific drum into the Auto Drum, dummy cartridge into the bullet seating die (I'm using four different cartridge OALs with the 30-30 win) and then check the powder drop. I bet I was done with everything from lubing the brass through emptying the powder hopper in 15 minutes.

My reloading software generates a report to let you know what you need to load. I've set all my large rifle inventory to trigger a "reload" when there are five or fewer cartridges left. It also has a maximum to be stored, which I set at 20, so it tells me how many to make. The software also monitors all the components used as well, everything. So If I'm running short of bullets, it tells me how many to cast based on the min/max levels I set. No more large stores of unused stuff sitting around. It gets confusing!

I keep my rifle ammunition in cardboard ammunition boxes that I bought from Midway. The software generates a label. I use boxes of 20 for the large rifle and boxes of 50 for short cartridges. All my pistol ammo goes into heavy plastic zip lock bags with the software label. Now all the ammo fits the storage shelves I designed to store it.

I had to do something to keep a handle on all this ammo.