.410 Re- Loader

[Lucky Joe]

Here is another interested party Jim, let her rip.

[JIMinPHX]

Alright, here goes –

Step 1

The first thing to do is decap. That was easy. I just turned a little base with a 3/8” hole for the old primer to drop down into & a little lip with a .535” ID to hold the spent shell centered. I turned a 4” long piece of 1/4" 1018 cold roll down to .150” diameter for a quarter inch at the end & used that for the punch. 3/8” stock would have been nicer to use, but I had a piece of 1/4" handy. Pay no attention to the area that is turned down near the top in the photo. I was using scrap material & that’s what was handy.

[JIMinPHX]

Step 2 – repriming

I took the easy way out here. I had a piece of stock laying around with a 1/2" hole already in it, so I just set that up on a vice, dropped the shell in it & tapped a new primer in with a rubber mallet. In reality, what I should have done was go out & buy a sizing collar off of a commercial press for about $4 & used that here instead. That way, I would have gotten sizing & priming out of the way. As it turns out, my hulls fit in my chamber as is, so I didn’t need sizing.

[JIMinPHX]

Step 3 – reaming out the old hull

I spun a piece of 1/2" aluminum down to .410” diameter for 3” & left another inch or so on the end as a handle. I chamfered the end pretty well. I used this to open up the end of the hull as needed.

[JIMinPHX]

Step 4 – powder charge

I just weighed out a charge of H110 from Hodgden’s reloading data & dumped it in the shell with a small funnel. I used the lessor charge for the Federal primer even though I was using Winchester primers. I figured that going a little on the lite side out of the gate was a good thing. I know that you're not supposed to download H-110 too far though.


Step 5 – Wad

I spun down another piece of aluminum to .335” diameter for 2.75” & left another inch or so on that for a handle too. No big rocket science here, I just used it to jam a wad in & leaned on it pretty good to make sure that it was home all the way.

[JIMinPHX]

Step 6 – Shot charge
I weighed out 3/4 oz. Of #8 & dumped it in with the same funnel that I had used for the powder. I tamped it down a little with the same tool that I had used to insert the wad so that it would leave me enough room for a good crimp. I also made note of the Lee dipper that was filled by this amount of shot, but I don’t have that note handy here at the computer right now.


Step 7 – Crimp

Here’s where it gets a little hairy. What I should have done, is go out & buy a 6-point star crimp die for like another $4. Instead, I just started the crimp with my thumbnails.

[JIMinPHX]

When it got about like this, I moved on to the next crimping step.

[JIMinPHX]

Here’s where I got a little more complicated. I made up a little retaining collar with a .455” ID to support the top of the shell. I only made it about 1/2" long, but in hind sight, I should have made it the full length of the shell’s plastic section for better support. I also made a little crimp “button” that had a 5/16” diameter for .050” long, followed by a .450” diameter that fit into the .455 ID of the retaining collar so as to keep the button centered on the shell.

[JIMinPHX]

I set the retaining ring & button up on top of the shell & put the whole mess in a single stage reloading press, between two pieces of scrap flat stock. 1/8” is thick enough. 3/16” is the most I could fit.

[JIMinPHX]

If I was careful about how much pressure I applied, I could get a good crimp. If I went too hard, I would buckle the hull & then need to repair the buckled section by sliding the retaining ring over it. If I had made the retaining ring the length of the shell’s plastic section, this would not be an issue. I’ll probably make a longer retaining ring eventually, but for now, I have enough ammo made up to test out tomorrow morning at the range & it looks pretty good.

[JIMinPHX]

Now if anybody sees anything here that looks unsafe or that should be done differently, please let me know. I’ve never loaded shot shells before. I just looked through the Lee reloading manual’s section on shot shells, got some loading data from Hodgden for some powder that I already had & loaded up with tools that I made from general knowledge as I went.

Like I said, if anybody sees anything off-spec about what I have here, please let me know.

Thanks,
Jim

[JIMinPHX]

In hindsight, I probably should have taken the advice of others & used a shell holder from a .303 Brit with an expanded hole in the center.

[JIMinPHX]

After having done some more of these, I’ll add that the more you get the crimp started before you hit it with the button, the better it works out. What is shown in the picture is about the minimum that will give you good results. Anything less than that makes a mess of the crimp. A deeper start than the picture shows makes it easier to get a good finished crimp.

[JIMinPHX]

About a week or two ago, one of the board members put a bug in my ear about getting back to this project again. It just happened to coincide with me trying to load up some 12 Ga. shells on a genuine Lee Loader, so all the stars kind of lined up & fell into place to get me back to improving the old .410 prototype. I've made some real progress. I'm actually happy with what I have now.

I was really disappointed with the genuine article from Lee. I've liked every other piece of equipment that I've ever bought from Lee, but their shot shell Lee Loaders do not play well with plastic hulls at all. I made a mess of every hull that I tried to load with it. The biggest problem was that the ram didn't have a stop collar on it to limit it's travel. I ended up shelving the whole Lee contraption & making my own from scratch. You can see a picture of my 12Ga. rig down near the bottom of this page - http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=88327

Back to the .410 project -
While I made up some nicer tools for decapping & repriming, there is really no new news there, so I'm not going to waste a bunch of space posting pictures of those tools. The real improvements came in the crimping & the shell support during crimping. Also, I found that I don't need to use a press at all. The force of hand pressure on the dies is enough to get the job done.

I'll start at the point where you already have the primer, powder, wad & shot in the hull. The first thing to watch is that you have the right amount of space left at the top of the shell. About 5/16" is good.

[JIMinPHX]

The next thing to do is start your crimp. jsizemore tipped me off that I could buy crimp starters from Precision Reloading. They were about $4 + shipping for a MEC. The .410 version is shown in the top left picture below.

The second picture shows the crimp starter being jammed down onto a shell that is sitting inside an aluminum stop collar that prevents you from pushing it down too far.

The bottom picture shows what the crimp looks like when you pull the starter off of it.

[JIMinPHX]

At first, I tried going straight to a punch die to finish the crimp. This gave me poor results as shown in the first picture below. Then I tried improving the started crimps by hand & got the results shown in the second picture. This worked, but it was slow, labor intensive & a little inconsistent.

[JIMinPHX]

My next innovation was the addition of an intermediate step. I made a little tapered die that pulls the started crimp further into center before the punch hits it. It's shown in the first picture below. The second picture shows this die inserted in a tight fitting tube that supports the shell & also acts as a depth stop.

[JIMinPHX]

The last step is the punch die. You remove the taper die from the tight fitting tube, replace it with the punch die & push down until the die hits the shoulder of the tube.

[JIMinPHX]

The pictures below show the crimp after the crimp starter (top left), after the taper die (bottom left) & after the punch die (top right).

[JIMinPHX]

Finished shells are shown below. They are a mixture of once fired hulls (3 pieces) & others that had been previously reloaded on the old rig. The one in the back, on the left, didn't have quite enough shot in it. I was just filling the shot to the correct level by eye. I probably should have measured a little more carefully.