Homemade 45 acp shotshell die

[jmorris]

I found a suitable donor die in my stash, an RCBS 44mag/SPL die. Ran a file across it and found that it was way too hard to machine.



So I heated it up to take the heat treat out of it.



At that point I drilled and tapped it 1/2-20 and and reamed the inside to resize the case and form the neck down portion.

With the cases formed I then machined down a grade 5 bold to act as a mandrel to push the over shot wad down below the crimp. The crimp mandrel was made with a 1/2" ball end mill and slides over the over shot wad mandrel.

This way you only use the one die, just remove the insert to form and replace it to seat the over shot wad and crimp.



With the old Remington shot rounds I am about out of I had to use a specific magazine but the new formed cases feed with all that I tried, in my "farm" 45 at least.



Cases are made from cut down 308 brass. Now all I need to do is make some over shot wads and cut down some .410 wads, to load a few up.

 

[GaryL]

That is so cool. Thanks for posting it up. Let us know how well it works.

 

[FROGO207]

Ballistic Products makes nitro cards and overshot cards for so cheap I would just buy them. Unless you HAVE to make the punches for it yourself.

 

[jmorris]

I punched 15 of them from a 12ga hull, I'll give them a try first.

 

[horsemen61]

Cool

 

[Paddy]

Why do you need an over shot wad when you have such a nice tight crimp? Also how did you get the crimp started without the star starter thing that shot presses use?

 

[Paddy]

Super cool btw. I've been looking into a way to do this with 45lc for a snake gun

 

[rudy.duda]

I used to use copper gas check backwards over the powder, load shot and then put another gas check on top and crimp to keep shot in. Regular crimp over that and you are done

 

[Rico567]

Great job, impressive skills!

 

[evan price]

Paddy: I believe the one on the right is a Remington factory shotshell the OP is talking about, and the one in the middle is the one he made, roll crimped, so needing the overshot card.

 

[Walkalong]

Very nice work. Looks like these will cycle by hand.

 

[hartcreek]

All that work just to ruin the rifling in your pistol when you could have simply bought CCI shot capsuls and loaded with what ever size shot you prefer.

 

[blarby]

This is so awesome !

 

[jmorris]

Paddy, Evan is correct the star crimped one is a factory Remington round. You can buy dies for them too but I didn't think they would be as easy to build. Baby has strep throat so I only had an hour or two to work on it yesterday during her nap.

All that work just to ruin the rifling in your pistol when you could have simply bought CCI shot capsuls and loaded with what ever size shot you prefer.

Not sure how a plastic .410 wad will ruin the rifling but I will keep my eye out for signs of trouble.

I have bought the hard plastic Speer capsules for years to load shot rounds for 38/357, 44 and 45 revolvers but they don't work for semiautos.

The ones CCI sells for 45 acp are quite similar to what I ended up with except use aluminum no reloadable cases and cost $1.50 per round.



Could you post a source for the CCI capsules? I didn't know they sold them empty like Speer and would like some of the ones they use for 9mm as unlike the square Speer capsules they will feed in a semiauto.

 

[Blue68f100]

You know the reason for the capsule was to make it legal. What you now have is a shotgun with too short of a barrel..

 

[ironworkerwill]

Nicely done! I'd like to know what size shot and powder combo you will use.

 

[Sam1911]

You know the reason for the capsule was to make it legal. What you now have is a shotgun with too short of a barrel.

Fortunately, that's not how the law works. (You're thinking of a Title II "AOW", being a smooth bore handgun. This is still a rifled, Title I handgun.)

 

[jmorris]

Nicely done! I'd like to know what size shot and powder combo you will use.

I am going to use #12 and start at 6 grains of Winchester 231.

 

[Paddy]

Ah okay I see. What about melted wax to seal in the top? I imagine it would instantly liquify on detonation and any trapped shot would be free to fly as designed.

 

[jmorris]

Loaded up a few, the wads were cut down to 11/16" and hard to get in on the first one. After that my brain started working and I used the wad guide off of one of my shotshell reloaders.

They hold 84.9+\- grains of #12 or around 425 pellets. Used 6 grains of 231 and over-shot wads punched from a 12ga hull.

Step by step.


They patterned tighter that my other pistol shot loads using Speer capsules, maybe because of the wad.?

15ft


Video link of them running.
http://s121.photobucket.com/user/jm...ID_20140325_151407_117_zps82af9b35-1.mp4.html

 

[blarby]

My guess-and this is just a guess- would actually be that the capsule itself is slowing down and blowing the pattern.

In a wad- the wad is behind the shot, and generally wont fall through the pattern.

In a capsule, the capsule is in front, and as it slows would go right through your string, or pattern, enroute to target, deflecting pellets as it does.

Could just be you made a better load- also awesome

 

[1KPerDay]

Very cool stuff!

 

[ironworkerwill]

What does the case mouth look like after firing? You may show that in the video but I have a bad connection. It's still impressive.

 

[Elkins45]

Extremely nice work, and thanks for sharing all your work. Posts like yours are the reason I like this forum so much.

For future projects if you don't want the use an expensive heat treated die you can pick up 7/8-14 threaded rod from Grainger or McMaster Carr relatively cheaply. I've used it to make a number of die bodies and push-thru sizing dies. It's just mild steel but so far I haven't seen any dimensional change.

 

[jmorris]

The case mouth still has some of the roll crimp left in it after firing. I just reloaded the fired cases, I used the Lee powder drop/ expander die (body) that came with my 458 socom set and the expander portion out of a .40 cal Lee die set. Should have done this the first time as the wad drops right in now.

I thought about a 7/8 UNF bolt for threads but didn't have one. I saved a search on ebay for the correct chasers for one of my geometric die heads for future projects.

I used the die because it was free, almost the correct dimentions to start with and I only had an hour or two to make it. Little girl has been sick and nap time was the build time.