My first case head separation

Excellent decision!

Mr_Flintstone said:

Anybody still make steel .357 mag dies?

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Many on Ebay.

Or save your money and do as Walkalong said, don't size so far down with your carbide die. You only need to size to the base of the bullet.

Lay a bullet beside a case with the cannalure even with the mouth. Mark case with a sharpie at bullet base. Set die to size to that line.

It doesn't have to be perfect.

Revolvers will need full length.

They generally have straight chambers and no mechanical leverage system.

Well seeing as the OP's issue seems to have been resolved, Mr awesome22-250 (or Walkalong), I'd like to ask something raised during the discussion.

I have an Uberti 1866/Yellow Boy lever rifle in 45 Colt. As it's a toggle-action design, I have so far stuck to standard (low) pressure loads, and plan to keep doing so.

Any reason for me to partially size, per the discussion above? I've done one round of reloads (fully resized, once-fired Starline) with no problem, and nothing wrong with the fired brass as far as I could tell.

Brass gets fatigued by working it. It gets worked because it expands from pressure and then we resize it with dies. Like bending a piece of solid copper wire over and over. This is why case mouths on straight walled handgun cases are generally the first to split/crack, because we generally work them the most. Resize, expand, crimp. Minimizing how much we expand and crimp adds to case mouth life. IMHO, and I may be wrong, while resizing your .357 brass only to where the bullet seats, may help with vertical cracks in your cases because you are not working that part of the brass, odds are, it is not going to completely stop the case head separation you are experiencing. That is being caused by the continued stretching of the weak point in the cartridge case, from firing high pressure loads in an action that flexes when shot. It may give you another load or two, but getting ten or more loading outta brass shot with max or near max loads in a lever action .357, FME, is doing pretty dang good anyway. Again, it's not just your reloading technique, but nature of the beast. For me, the "paper clip test" generally will spot incipient case head separation. Many times the "shiny ring" is readily apparent. For the most part, I keep my batches of brass segregated. Then, if I find a case in a batch that shows signs of incipient case head separation, I discard the whole batch. While brass is pricey, I keep high pressure rounds fired in my levers segregated, after a coupla times, I delegate them to the revolvers only, or to moderate pressure loads only. This makes them last till the mouth crack/split. Case head separation does not only ruin that piece of brass, but can erode or etch your chamber, making for hard extraction. There is more reason to avoid it than just the hassle of getting the broken case out.

No way I'd be firing expensive XTP's and large charges of slow burning powders at pop cans.

Cast 158's and HS-6 or some other powder in that general burn rate area is where I'd wanna be.

Mr_Flintstone said:

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So, if I bump the load down just a little, I should get longer case life then? Looking at Hodgdon, even going all the way to minimum on IMR-4227 and W296 should only cause about 100 FPS reduction or so.

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It's not the velocity, but the pressure that makes the cases stretch. Look at the difference in pressure between Min and Max. You also need to use more than one source of reference. Hornady maker of the bullet you are using gives much lower powder charges in their recipes than what you are giving us from Hodgdon. Hornady's max loads using H110/W296(in the .357 rifle section) are less than Hodgdon's min loads. No reason for max loads against pop cans.

Looks like it’s back to “Magnum” powders.

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Not necessarily. For plinking with my lever .357 I like 7.5 gr of Unique under a bulk 158JHP or 8 gr under a bulk 125JHP. Easy on me, easy on the rifle and easy on the cases. Like shooting a .22 mag. This is one of those places I use those cases I have fired two or three heavier loads from. They last a long time shot like this.

Mr_Flintstone said:

You know, I never even thought of checking Hornady. They have W296 all the way down to 11.8 gr. I worry about going that low with W296 though. I believe Winchester recommends against reducing W296 more than 3% from max. Going down to 11.8 gr would be a 47% reduction.

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I too would not take H110/W296 that low, basically because it really loses accuracy when you download it too far. Stick with magnum primers and a tight crimp and outside of shooting it in -10 weather, I think you would be fine. I'd guess Hornady is well aware of the issues of downloading H110/W296 and would not publish recipes that would invite squibs. I certainly would think their middle of the road charges like 18 gr would work. For loads that would produce the same velocities as Hornady's start loads with H110/W296, there are better powders out there.

I don't why Hornady does not heed the advise of Hodgdon about not downloading H110/W296 more than 3% from max.

I emailed them about it once and never got a responce.

Those'll make nice shirt buttons!

Walkalong said:

.38 Spl, grossly overloaded.
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Would you please explain how steel dies can help with this issue, mrawesome22-250? I don't get it.

mrawesome22-250 said:

Pistol caliber rifles have large tapered chambers for reliabilty sake.

This is a simple case of over worked brass.

Partial size, steel dies, Redding dual ring. All 3 will cure this.

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