As has been endlessly discussed, seasonally available, periodically available, etc., brass has about dried up for many older chamberings. Now that Winchester is apparently out of the business of supplying brass and possibly even loaded ammo for 32-40 Winchester those of us who enjoy shooting ours have to get by on gun show/estate sale finds or make our own. My rifle is a Falling Block Works Model J with an RKSmith gain twist barrel, shuetzen rifle so a few cases will last a long time. But, here's the problem: I've only ever had 20 cases for this rifle and there is a 100 Shot offhand match coming up. Breech seating and reloading one case 120+ times in July heat and humidity isn't my idea of a good time. So to prepare for (heresy) shooting this match I bought a new NOE 4 hole bullet mold, a big box of Starline 38-55 Winchester brass and a set of RCBS Cowboy 32-40 Win dies. And, yes, my chamber is the Winchester (2.085") depth not the older 2.125". Still working on alloy, temperature and pace with the mold but that will get sorted out.
Starline says their brass is hard and the case mouths may be dented. They aren't kidding. I began by trying to size the cases in one step. I got 20 made but lost 5 in the process. So the first step was to run a batch over a .375 expander to round out their mouths because almost any visible defect in the case mouth resulted in a folded case. As long as I was at it I set up the annealer and ran 200 of the expanded cases through it. This greatly reduced the reject rate but I still got a few folded cases. Each of the folded cases had a nick or burr on the case mouth before swaging, so maybe I should have trimmed and deburred after expanding them. All up I ended up with 216 usable cases and 12 fatalities. They all drop right in, so they're not too long and once trimmed to uniform length, inside and outside chamfered are ready to be loaded. All in all a pretty good way to spend a rainy afternoon. Here's a photo of the results: