Making 45acp shotshells (My Way)

[Fla9-40]

I don't know how the other guys do it, but I use a Dillon 40cal sizer (take a look at my post). First I size my case and cut to length, trim on my Forster trimmer, prime, charge, seat the wad, fill with shot, now I run it into the Dillon 40cal crimp, insert a gas check, then crimp, then one more time through the 40cal crimp die and voila, it's done. That's how I do it, but I'm sure there are many more ways to skin this cat.

Using .243 or .308 brass

I for the life of me can not get the brass to go into a .40 or .41mag die it just will not fit! I have crushed every piece of brass that I have tried (in the 41 mag). The brass will not start in the .40s&w die at all.

I trim the brass, Chamfer and De-burr then run it in my 45acp sizing die and then try it in the 41mag, no go crushed it every time. Tried the .40 and it will not even try to start into this die...

[dsbock]

Does one brand of sizer die have a more radiused mouth? Making it easier to feed the brass?

I'd like to know before I buy the sizer die.

Thanks.

David

[GRUMPA]

I use the 40cal RCBS carbide sizer die, and it does have a pretty good sized radius on it. You guys might want to try a .451 push through sizer LEE die if you have it and then follow it with the 40cal die....

[Michael J. Spangler]

I size my brass before trimming it down to length.
The 308 neck slides right into the 40 cal die nice and easy. Then trim the thin necks.

[Johnny_V]

The Dillon crimp die has the most generous radius of any of the crimp dies. If you can't get your case to fit the Dillon die, there is something definitely a miss.

[littlejack]

sparky45:
45 Magnum brass works great. I made all of my 45 shot loads with that brass. It has more internal room, and you can get quite a bit more shot payload in it.

[Johnny_V]

I finally made a video of how I make 45ACP shotshells and posted it on You Tube. You can view it here. Let me know what you think....

[sparky45]

Thanks Littlejack, that's what I was hoping for.
S45

[sparky45]

I finally made a video of how I make 45ACP shotshells and posted it on You Tube. You can view it here. Let me know what you think....

First off, excellent video. Secondly I have a "stupid" question: I either missed the information or forgot, or both; but I assume the gas check is a 40 cal check, yes? And, thirdly, super set of fabricated dies. It would be really nice to have a machine shop and the skill to make this type of equipment.
S45

[Johnny_V]

First off, excellent video. Secondly I have a "stupid" question: I either missed the information or forgot, or both; but I assume the gas check is a 40 cal check, yes? And, thirdly, super set of fabricated dies. It would be really nice to have a machine shop and the skill to make this type of equipment.
S45

Sparky,

Thank you.... Not a stupid question, it's a .375 gas check. I agree, it sure is nice to have the machines to do this type of project....

[sparky45]

Thanks Johnny for the info.
S45

[RoyEllis]

I use the 40cal RCBS carbide sizer die, and it does have a pretty good sized radius on it. You guys might want to try a .451 push through sizer LEE die if you have it and then follow it with the 40cal die....

Grumpa, I don't have anything in 40 or 41 cal to need those dies so I subbed my 44 mag sizer to start the neck down then use my lee .432 boolit sizer to bring them the rest of the way down and final crimp with 44 seater die. It's a bit fiddly getting dies set to neck down just right so case headspaces correctly, but it sure works. Just a thought for anybody w/o 40 dies but have 44 dies.
I also make cyl. length shot shells for my SBH 44 from '06 or .308 cases. Anneal then size w/44 die (it'll stop about .200 above extractor groove) then chuck up drill press & carefully file away hump above ext. groove w/press @ med speed, run through sizer again to size to groove. Isn't much overhang from head, but enough to catch on cylinder face. I use 44 sp data usually Bullseye or Red Dot chg starting load appropriate to weight of shot charge, card wad top & bottom (top sealed with white glue after crimp). Makes a pretty good shot shell for .44's, almost like a 1.75" .410 shell. YMMV but I get best patterns with fairly slow loads, they seem to blow apart if pushed fast.

[vicdoc]

I have been reading the castboolits threads on these shotshells for a month and thought they're neat, and "I can do that".

So I have been fiddling around in the garage.

I first used a pipe cutter to cut the brass. After getting tired of that I bought a HF 2" chop saw and made a wood jig for that. My fingers are happier.


For neck sizing I bought Lee carbide 41 magnum dies. I size full length resized 308 brass before cutting them with lots of lube. I make fewer bad cases this way. For the most part the necking is concentric.


I have no W231, but lots of other choices, like 700X, Bullseye, Unique, and 2# of International Clays I have no other possible use for.

I used card wads over the powder, and now I use 45 cal Wonder Wads, and 45 cal Vegetable fiber wads both meant for black powder. Leading is an issue with these wads, but less so than with the card wads I punched out. I use a 38-55 vegatable wad for over the shot. It's great. I'm thinking of smearing some Bore Butter on the shot before putting on the over shot wad and see if that helps the leading. I like the idea of shot cups but I think 115 to 120 gr of shot is what I need to get the things to cycle my gun.

I use a piece of 3/8" dowel for tamping the wads, inside and on top.

I have used between 95 to 120gr of 7-1/2 shot. The more the better.

The crimp was the hard part.

I radiussed the end of an old 223 die with my Dremel tool first, that sort of worked, then I bought a 7/16" carbide ball end mill and smoothed that out so it works wonderful with the right amount of force..
Here's my die after one round of smoothing, before I smoothed it out some more:


You do have to be careful about how the case enters the mouth of the die, it's easy to go off center and ruin the brass.

The roll crimp takes some practice, the feel is a lot like a primer seating, but too much and my crimps look weird. They still work, though.

I might have to try annealing the mouth for more consistent extraction. I don't have a torch, maybe I'll figure out a way to do it on my gas stove.

For the most part, my Para P-14/45 likes these better than my Glock G30S.

Here are some I made up today beside some old CCIs I still have. Thank you folks here for helping me.

[dsbock]

Vicdoc,

Can you describe how you made the jig?

Thanks.

David

[vicdoc]

Vicdoc,

Can you describe how you made the jig?

Thanks.

David

It's a piece of wood baseboard molding, turned upside down. You remove the clamp of the HF chopsaw, and screw it in place (from underneath) after deciding where to put the grooved molding or wood channel for the case. It is positioned just forward of the red plastic safety lock.

The white molding is garage door weather seal.

You can make something out of wood with a router, with a groove for the cartridge.

The screw near the blade prevents the case from being drawn away while the blade is cutting it.

The rear screw is placed so that the bevel of the head can adjust the length of cut.

It works, sort of.

The garage door molding is a tiny bit flexible, how you press down affects the straightness of the cut, so I've learned how much pressure to put to get a level cut after some practice.

I think a better model will be made out of wood when I break out my router. A router is a scary machine, I just mainly wanted to get up a jig quickly and it does work. I cut 10 good cases last night, and 2 short ones. Even they didn't go to waste. I practiced the crimp on those.

If you have a case trimmer, then this works great. Just cut a bit long and trim to size.

There are some videos of very nicely done jigs out there for 300BLK case cutting, even automated ones, for those who want to spend the time and money.

[GunFun]

Great write up. I really like that this works with tools and brass that I already have, and doesn't require glue or isenglas.

[GunFun]

I had someone else test them for me, which was all of 6 rounds. He said they worked just fine but had to manually cycle the action. I'm sorry to say I don't own anything that small, and personally wont either.

He was all hot to trot to have me make more for him, and his buddies, and a few relatives, a bunch of friends, a few neighbors, and of course all there friends and so on. Heck I just wanted to see if I could do it and make notes and be done with it.

Did you share those notes somewhere? I'd like to have a look.

[GRUMPA]

Did you share those notes somewhere? I'd like to have a look.

No I didn't since I used a special tool for crimping the 9mm shot loads. If you go into the swaging section and look at the sticky I have on 40 to 45cal swaging, and look at the pictures, that's what a "Notching" die does. Forming those up was the same as the 45 shot shells, it was closing the end that I used the notching die on. It pretty much looked like a shrunken down 5.56 blank

[GunFun]

I think I have read that thread. Basically the same idea as a crimp starter for plastic shotshells.

[dsbock]

I bought a .41 Magnum carbide sizer die and resized a few cases. I tested on both cut and uncut cases using plenty of lube.

The first uncut case sized perfectly. After that they all seemed to size more on one side than the other. In some cases there was almost no sizing on one side.

Same thing happened with the cut cases. If there's a trick to this, I haven't found it yet.

If anyone had any suggestions on improving the concentricity of my sizing, I'm eager to learn.

Thanks.

David