Can I get away with not sizing my .38-55 brass?

[Lance Boyle]

I am moving along on my Taylor Uberti High Wall .38-55 project and have run myself to tight dimensions and clearances to allow for the deep grooves.

Anyways I have a 250 grain bullet sized to .383 and I can hand seat my bullet in my unsized brass with a good tight slip fit. I need very firm thumb pressure to do so. The loaded round leaves me 0.001 to 0.0015 under the chamber size.

I am using 4198 not black so I am not expecting tons of fouling to spoil my fit.

Is this tight hand press fit ok for my 1885 shooting? My thoughts is the sheutzen game was done with seating while chambering so it cannot be too bad.

Do I want to crimp anyway?

Loads are mild, basically have been using target loads from Pet Loads author ken waters. 21 grains gives 1290 ish FPS and is in his lighter group of pet loads for light duty guns that handle less pressure.

I might load 20 crimped and 20 not crimped and see what looks best.

Your thoughts please and thank you.

[MyFlatline]

As for sizing, if it fits the chamber your good. Sounds like you have good bullet hold/neck tension but I would test some with a mild to medium crimp and see if it changes your POI. I know crimp plays a key in many of my loads..

[RCE1]

I competed for many years in BPCR and pretty much never sized my brass. I would clean them, anneal them and run the expander ball in just to iron out the necks from the tumbling, then prime, powder and seat the wad. The bullets were lubed with Dan Theodore's White Lightning and seated by hand. I had the bullets seat way out so they engaged the lands when chambered. If I was hunting, I'd not go out with zero neck tension, but for target shooting, it worked great.

[Lance Boyle]

Good enough! I am strictly punching paper here so a breach seat could work for me. It really is a firm push but I bet even breach seated into the lands it is enough pull to extract.

Thank you for your counsel gents.

[country gent]

I clean deprime prime charge cases seat the bullet on the wad stack and then size the neck just enough to set the neck tension around the bullet in my 38-55. One gun should be fine with fired brass for a long time. Multiple guns or an out of round chamber may require sizing to allow rounds to interchange easily.

Breech seating was normally done with a special case and pusher to set it into the throat the same way every time. then the charged case with a wad was seated behind it. The pusher had a stop on it that set depth the bullet was inserted so there was very little or no air space between bullet base and case. Some of these pushers were pretty involved having a lever and linkage to give more force to seat the bullet.

[country gent]

A draw back to breech seating is if at a public range and you load its hard to unload if a cease fire is called. The case can be removed but a rod is needed to push the bullet out.

[Lance Boyle]

I guess my breech seating knowledge was rudimentary.

I guess I will stay off the lands for now.

Thank you.

[50target]

Yours should like the 4198, mine does. Nothing under .380 does very well. Tried long & short brass. Next I'm looking to shoot some heavy boolits. Love the Win 1885 action. My barrel is really smooth & trouble free & not one problem have I had with the Uberti HW
Bob

[barrabruce]

I have shot my ss 30-30 like this for a long time.
I du'wanna work my brass.
I use dacron as a filler and I don't care anymore if they call cease fire.
You can leave the bullet in there seated.Supposed depends on the range or range officer.
But I had one that would wait just so he could p me off. A filler helped my load as well.
I have known to even rub the outside of my cases every now and again.
Apart from that I leave them as fired.

As for hunting a breach seated bullet for the first shot I can't see any reason not to.
Maybe carry a couple of extras in your teeth to chamber for the unexpected finishing shot or if you have a bad primer or something.

I'd be more worried about the stuff people use to beat up and clean they're brass with getting into my barrel and dinging my precision formed perfectly matched brass..

ymmv

[Lance Boyle]

It did pretty decent with commercial bullets 260 grain flat points sized to .381. That didn’t quite get to groove diameter so I had a mold made by Tom at Accurate. They drop even fatter than I planned at .385ish. I need to play with the heat a bit. I am sizing to .383 to be just over groove. I had to order the star sizer die cut to order too. Being off sized is the story of my life.


Hopefully these fatter bullets shoot tighter than the store boughts. If I can get happy groups I will invest in a lee shaver sight for it.


ETA I forgot when I did thumb press my bullet into an empty case I did breach seat and extract in one piece. I forgot I did that when I tested my just sized and lubed bullet.

[Kraschenbirn]

Have never sized brass for BP loads in my 38-55 Taylor (Uberti) Highwall. Powder/wad compressed with M die; pan-lubed, as-cast boolit seated against wad with thumb pressure only; load and fire...clean/prime brass and repeat. 'Bout as simple as it gets.

Bill

[Lance Boyle]

Thanks Bill. I have read your threads/posts a few times in my .38-55 studies

[marlinman93]

I don't size cases on any of my single shot cartridge loads. I also don't crimp anymore than needed to remove the slight bell I put in for some bullets. Or to get some neck tension on the bullets. Less sizing means longer case life, and I rarely toss out cases.

[Kraschenbirn]

Thanks Bill. I have read your threads/posts a few times in my .38-55 studies

Did a quick re-read of your initial post. For smokeless, you will most likely need to resize enough of the case to get a snug fit. I 'neck size' my smokeless loads...like running only the first 1/2"-5/8" of the case into the sizer which gives me a consistent 'interference fit' using my favorite boolit for the Highwall; an old Ohaus RNFP that drops 304 gr. and .381-.382 from 25/1 alloy.

[Green Frog]

A couple of quick points... first (and IMHO) if the bullet will start in the mouth of the fired case without doing anything, why do anything? If any adjustment to the case neck would be needed, it would probably be a little taper crimp once the bullet is seated.
Second, if you are going with a mild smokeless load, you might try the modern equivalent of the old IMR 4227. I would also suggest the late, lamented IMR 4759 as well, but since it now is moving into the same category as Unobtanium and Fairy Dust, it would probably be futile to develop loads with it then not be able to continue using them.

Froggie

[Boz330]

I love 4759 and I have a reasonable supply of it the go to powder in 30call cases and cast.

Bob

[marlinman93]

I've got a 4 lb. keg, and one pound can of 4759. I'm trying to stretch them until me and the powder are gone at the same time!

[Lance Boyle]

Well I did the Edison experiment method. I will do all the methods that don’t work before moving on to something that does work.

1. The slip fit into the unsized case and leaving long to breach seat did not work with 4198. Well they went bang and all and I fact did hit the target paper. Sloppy group about grapefruit sized. Lots of unburned powder in the bore and lots of smoke that resisted me blowing out of the single shot. So not an efficient burn in my opinion.



Next batch is sized (partial now so not to squeeze the above web area down). I only have the .379 expander, nothing bigger. So I have about 4 thou interference.

Batch after that will be slip fit with a crimp but I am not sure that is enough for a good burn.

Thank you for your help and comraderie.

Oh and I will bring a bigger backer. I struggle with our black backer foam as it doesn’t contrast with my sights. Still want a lee shaver economy.