410 Case Forming from 303 Brit for round ball or slug use

[W.R.Buchanan]

Ballistic Products Inc. has Magtech Hulls, wads of every description, round balls and slugs. I don't know if they ship to NZ but a look at their website will answer that question,,, and it will also give you a bunch of ideas on possible projectiles and types of wads you can make yourself.

There's also a lot of threads in the "Casting for Shotguns" section on this issue and tons of information that will be helpful.

Do you guys have Walmart in NZ? They generally sell ammo, and would be a good source for .410 loaded ammo you could make into reloaded ammo.

When I got my Browning Sporting Clays edition O/U a few years ago the first thing I did was go to Walmart and buy a couple of boxes of shells. They were $12.50 for 25 or .50 cents a shot. I then went on Trapshooters.com and bought 1000 O/F Winchester Hulls for $100 or .10 each. (good deal as they go for as much as .20 cents lots of times.

I then bought a Pacific DL266 loader in .410 and had to pay $250 for it. But now I can load .410's for about .10 ea. which allows me to shoot that gun a lot more than if I had to buy new ammo for it. I have loaded about 600 of those first 1000 and the ones I've shot are now twice fired and no worse than when I started with them. I see them easily going 5-6 loadings before they give up and that's 5-6000 rounds which will take me some time to burn up.

Other cases come and go as well and some nice 3" Winchester Hulls have landed in my possession and will be loaded with #6 or #8 shot for Dove season, if I ever get invited to shoot doves here again. I could get my limit with my pellet gun in my Front Yard but can't seem to find a place to shoot them with my shotgun, as all the Ranchers around here are very protective and only let their friends in.

I find the .410 to be one of the most interesting Shotguns to shoot and if you get your limit with a .410 with less than a box of shells you've actually accomplished something noteworthy.

Looking forward to seeing some of your blown out .303 cases as I have plenty of them too.

Randy

[victorfox]

Do you guys have Walmart in NZ? They generally sell ammo, and would be a good source for .410 loaded ammo you could make into reloaded ammo.

Randy, given the gun control laws in NZ/OZ I doubt very much WalMart sells the good stuff there. We also have them here in Brazil and the most we can buy is airguns and pellets. Never a firearm or ammo... Sadly...

I guess 303guy is up to his ears in .303 cases... LOL I myself prefer loading brass shells for my guns, specially the .410, but then I use a Smoothbore Judge, and cut some to .45Colt length to shoot round balls.

Going off topic, do you already have the Feb/17 Handloader mag? It has 2 pages on your hand press. Congrats!

[303Guy]

I've only made one reloadable case so far and haven't had a chance to actually load it and fire it (test tube needs to be pulled out from the back after my move).

You know, I actually have a round ball mold somewhere. It's probably a collectible and would in any case be too big but maybe I could copy it.

I have been thinking of building a round ball machine. One rotating disc over one with an orbital motion. The idea is to make the balls perfectly round after casting. I haven't thought about the mechanism yet but designs should be out there.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I have never really been a fan of the 3in. .410, and especially the slug load. A quick run through NZ wildlife doesn't look like showing up anything that is neither too big nor too small, and can make do with the accuracy. Another run through the wildlife suggests a very low rate of violent home invasions too.

But if you do want to use ball, the 9.3x74R is the counsel of perfection, and 3in. plastic, without that half-inch jump from case to forcing cone, is probably better than 2½in. brass. A modest advantage of the smoothbore, when it comes to accuracy, is that it isn't as dependent as a rifle on precisely central location of the bullet mass.

Here is the SAAMI specification for the .410 chamber. The rim is bevelled at 55 degrees from the bore axis. If you were doing it the other way around, chambering a barrel, you could modify a 110 degree countersink

http://www.saami.org/pubresources/cc...20Bore%203.pdf

I don't know if a device for rolling lead balls would work. I think it would skid around without rotating, keeping the same little flats in contact. Besides, remember the Law of Conservation of Matter, which says, more or less, that everything has to be somewhere. You can't make a metal materially smaller without removing some of it. A long time ago I made dies for chomping .375in. balls out of a cast slab of lead with a ten-ton hydraulic press. A reloading press won't do it, but a bullet swaging one should.

I made two dies from 1in. round steel, turned down to about a 1/20in. rim around the cavity, which I cut with a ⅜in. ball nosed end mill or slot drill. 10mm. is easily available, and carbide ball burrs sometimes cut a bit oversize. There should be a hole or grooved edge in one or both cavities to allow excess lead to escape, and reverse tapered so that your extruded lead wire doesn't get stuck. You can also weld them to the shortened jaws of a large pair of bolt cutters, or make a tubular guide to squash the dies together in a powerful engineer's vice. In the latter case, though, you will have to insert a piece of lead close to the final weight rather than cut from the slab.

I'm close to my allowance of posted pictures, so this diagram refers to the same technique with a different kind of bullet. You could even make a Forster-type slug that way, rather like the smoothbore airgun slugs which used to exist before kids all had rifled bores and long trousers. That would let you out of producing .410 hemispheres. But the .410 has high pressure by shotgun standards, and would probably benefit from a more conical base cavity than the Lyman moulds. I don't recommend the Lyman mould for 12ga and 20ga, incidentally, unless you are willing and able to swage the raised ribs for which they were originally designed. They cast considerably undersize.

[303Guy]

The two discs have a different motion. One simply rotates while the other has a wobbly orbital motion. This forces the ball to randomly roll between them. It will not not size the ball, just round it. It's not my idea, I got it from a process used in the past (may still used?)

Thanks for the ideas and input. Maybe I can make a 'standard' size ball with a swaging die (I have a trolley jack to use as a ram) then rounding in the rounding machine. That way multiple balls can be rounded simultaneously. I'm assuming the actual diameter won't be too important in a cup (been wrong about things before though).

I do have that SAAMI diagram. I shaped the rim with the chamfer in the lathe using a file. I'll make up something to hold the cases properly when I make a batch of them.

[LAGS]

Like mentioned before in the thread, You can not change the diameter without removing metal.
So if you have a lead ball the diameter you want, then cut a cut a hunk of lead the same weight, then when pounded into a ball shape then Tumbled in a rotary Tumbler or Rock Tumbler, or roller plate, I will come out the same size.
A tumbler seems like a quicker method of rounding the lead balls than trying to design a Roller Plate system device.
IE
if the ball diameter you want weighs 150 gr.
Cast a slug in a bullet mold that you have that casts any shape 150 gr slug.
Put it on a steel plate, and tap it with a hammer to get it to a more round shape, then tumble the slugs.
You would have to start out the same way if you are going to use a roller plate set up, Unless you already have a Round Ball Mold of the right Diameter.
Then, Why would you need to roll them to make them Prefect, except for to round off the Sprue nub.
A tumbler will do that too.
I tumble all the balls I cast for and shoot out of my muzzle loaders.

[GONRA]

RoyEllis - GONRA sez: "209 Battery Cup Shotshell Primers"
in drilled out rifle cases are great for LOW PRESSURE loads ONLY!
Wear Yer Safety Glasses (goggles are better here!) and BE CAREFUL!

(Yeah, everybody already nos this, but might be Fresh Info for SOME NEWBE!)

Believe it or not, a few years ago, someone on the FCSA website
was promoting drilling out .50 BMG cases for battery cup shotshell primers
to save $$$ by NOT buying CCI .50 BMG primers!

[BigEyeBob]

Randy, given the gun control laws in NZ/OZ I doubt very much WalMart sells the good stuff there. We also have them here in Brazil and the most we can buy is airguns and pellets. Never a firearm or ammo... Sadly...

I guess 303guy is up to his ears in .303 cases... LOL I myself prefer loading brass shells for my guns, specially the .410, but then I use a Smoothbore Judge, and cut some to .45Colt length to shoot round balls.

Going off topic, do you already have the Feb/17 Handloader mag? It has 2 pages on your hand press. Congrats!

No Walmarts in Australia,but years ago KMart used to sell rifles and ammunition.