Fire-Forming Brass/ Reduced Loads

[steve4102]

The snow is going to be gone here in a few months so I figured it is time to get all of my brass prepped and ready to go.


I have a bunch of 300WSM brass that needs to be fire-formed. I also have a bunch of 130gr Hornady's just sitting on the shelf doing nothing. I would like to burn up these bullets and fire-form this brass using Hodgdon's reduced load 42.5gr of H4895. Hodgdon lists this with a pressure of 28,400 PSI.


Can a reduced load such as this be used to fire-form new brass, or do I need a stronger load to form the brass properly?

Thanks Again

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Fireformed into what?

If you're developing a wildcat, with different case dimensions than the original, tell us what it is.

If you're just once-firing the brass to get it to conform to the chamber, virtually any load will do.

 

[steve4102]

[QUOTE

If you're just once-firing the brass to get it to conform to the chamber, virtually any load will do.[/QUOTE]

This is all I am going to do with this load.

 

[snuffy]

Why?

This is all I am going to do with this load.

You are needlessly burning up valuable components and wearing out your rifle for nothing. There's no reason to fireform new brass to a standardised chamber. Just load the shells with whatever test load you want to try out, the subsequent loadings will be so close, you could never see any difference.

You might be able to measure a difference if you had a match chamber cut by a smith who knows what he's doing, but a factory chamber will not show any difference.

 

[steve4102]

You are needlessly burning up valuable components and wearing out your rifle for nothing. There's no reason to fireform new brass to a standardised chamber. Just load the shells with whatever test load you want to try out, the subsequent loadings will be so close, you could never see any difference.

You might be able to measure a difference if you had a match chamber cut by a smith who knows what he's doing, but a factory chamber will not show any difference.

Might be FUN though. Any day at the range is worth the trip, yes?