greyling22
Member
so I've started down the 300 ham'r road. bought some lee dies, found some lake city 223 brass in the scrap bucket, borrowed a harbor freight mini chop saw and started running into snags.
needed a 300 han'r jig. I bought a squirrel daddy blackout jig and cut the saw notch wider.
however, it needed an additional mod: the case is designed to be cut, then shoved to the left through that channel. However, the channel was too tight and the cases stuck. So I had to file it just a tad wider.
Next, I typically use the cheap lee trimmer setup where you chuck the case in your drill and use a gauge attached to a cutter. However, Lee doesn't make a 300 ham'r gauge. So I got creative and looked at what they did have. Turns out they make a 30 herrett that is only about 2 hundredths too long. Took a tad off the pin at the end to get the appropriate length and I was in business.
Necking up cases/resizing: Some guys say to size first, then cut the neck, but it's a LOT harder to size up the case with a full neck than the case with a cut down neck. Also, I tried my hand at annealing a case to see if it would make any difference in ease of sizing or reducing split necks. Now, it was lousy redneck annealing using the gas burner on the stove until the case got too hot to hold, and I didn't get the nice color change I got when I was using an actual annealing setup to anneal roberts cases when I was making 257 ackley brass. But long story short, it didn't seem to help the resizing effort, and nothing split on the 6 lake city cases I was playing with so I didn't fool with annealing.
cases cut first resized fairly easily. I resized 400 cases and got 1 split. And most of these cases already had the primer pockets swaged or reamed when I picked them up at the range, so they were not once fired.
final trim was uneventful. The first 50 were fun. The next 350, not so much and took several days.
I assume they will fire form and take some of the body taper out once they are fired. wilson's data says reduce your load 5% for chopped lake city brass. I have powder, primers, brass, and a few bullets. I just need wilson to make some more of the 11" barrels (supposedly by the end of the month) and to find some 125 or 130 grain hunting bullets. The TNT's and hot core's are recommended.
if anybody has been down this road and wants to chime in with tips or advice I'm all ears. Regardless, it's been fun so far. I've reloaded for years, even had an Ackley improved gun, but this is the first time I have really made brass from something else. It was neat.
needed a 300 han'r jig. I bought a squirrel daddy blackout jig and cut the saw notch wider.
however, it needed an additional mod: the case is designed to be cut, then shoved to the left through that channel. However, the channel was too tight and the cases stuck. So I had to file it just a tad wider.
Next, I typically use the cheap lee trimmer setup where you chuck the case in your drill and use a gauge attached to a cutter. However, Lee doesn't make a 300 ham'r gauge. So I got creative and looked at what they did have. Turns out they make a 30 herrett that is only about 2 hundredths too long. Took a tad off the pin at the end to get the appropriate length and I was in business.
Necking up cases/resizing: Some guys say to size first, then cut the neck, but it's a LOT harder to size up the case with a full neck than the case with a cut down neck. Also, I tried my hand at annealing a case to see if it would make any difference in ease of sizing or reducing split necks. Now, it was lousy redneck annealing using the gas burner on the stove until the case got too hot to hold, and I didn't get the nice color change I got when I was using an actual annealing setup to anneal roberts cases when I was making 257 ackley brass. But long story short, it didn't seem to help the resizing effort, and nothing split on the 6 lake city cases I was playing with so I didn't fool with annealing.
cases cut first resized fairly easily. I resized 400 cases and got 1 split. And most of these cases already had the primer pockets swaged or reamed when I picked them up at the range, so they were not once fired.
final trim was uneventful. The first 50 were fun. The next 350, not so much and took several days.
I assume they will fire form and take some of the body taper out once they are fired. wilson's data says reduce your load 5% for chopped lake city brass. I have powder, primers, brass, and a few bullets. I just need wilson to make some more of the 11" barrels (supposedly by the end of the month) and to find some 125 or 130 grain hunting bullets. The TNT's and hot core's are recommended.
if anybody has been down this road and wants to chime in with tips or advice I'm all ears. Regardless, it's been fun so far. I've reloaded for years, even had an Ackley improved gun, but this is the first time I have really made brass from something else. It was neat.
