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Thread: .236 Navy--The Hard Way

  1. #1
    Boolit Master
    Bent Ramrod's Avatar
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    .236 Navy--The Hard Way

    A prominent advertiser in our area, determined to build a huge business empire in plumbing, heating and air conditioning, claims his technicians do their jobs "The Right Way; Not The Easy Way." I don't know if this procedure is The Right Way (although so far, so good), but it sure was not The Easy Way. There is Case Forming (necking down or up, "improving"), Heavy Case Forming (setting back shoulders, cutting lengths down, neck turning and reaming), and what Bill Ballard used to refer to as "Violent" Case Forming (base swaging and turning, modifying rims, grafting on brass tubing, the sky the limit). This is well into Category 3.

    More than 20 years ago, the Jr. College Machine Shop course I was taking over and over was on the chopping block. Social-climbing Administrators wanted to dump most of the trades classes and replace them with computers and sensitivity training, (y'know; like a real University has). I had to get into gear to get a bunch of stuff finished before the axe fell.

    One of the projects was providing ammunition for my Winchester 1895 Lee Straight-Pull rifle. Usable cartridges could be made by expanding the necks of .220 Swift cases, but the necks were undesirably short, and in this form, the necks never lengthened, despite my best hopes, a lot of reloading, and maintaining a total lack of lube when dragging the necks over the expander button. The original necks were long, like .30-40 necks, and the bullets were long as well, 115-135gr, which meant a long leade or freebore to jump through for even the longest current .243 caliber bullets in proper necks. Extra length bullets, beyond the round-nose Speer and Hornady 100-105 grainers, were rare, expensive, and, in the case of the boat-tailed VLDs, were impractical. Such bullets, barely seated into the mouths of the expanded .220 Swift shells, looked kind of ridiculous, and could be knocked loose with rough handling or chambering.

    The Old Western Scrounger made shells of the proper neck length, by turning the rims and thinning the bases of .30-40 Krag shells, but I didn't like the idea of a thinned base in a smokeless cartridge originally operating at smokeless pressures. Especially with the Lee, which has been known to blow up because of overloads and more mysterious causes. I cast about for something that had a base diameter close to the .236 Navy, but there really wasn't much of anything easily available. The nearest base size that would give the proper length was the .240 Weatherby Magnum, but it had a base diameter (sans belt) of 0.453" vs the Navy's 0.445". This was well beyond the ability of my resizing die.

    However, by keeping a lookout at gun shows, I was able to find 59 once-fired .240 Weatherby cases, and made a little chuck, mandrel and tailpiece out of brass to hold them straight in my lathe. Turning the belt off was easily accomplished with this device.
    A friend had given me a length of precipitation-hardening tool steel. Hardening is accomplished by wrapping the piece and a scrap of paper into steel foil, heating the assembly in an oven to a good orange, taking out and letting it air-cool. The paper takes up the oxygen, and once cool, the metal is hard, with no scale. I made up four dies and a plunger from this metal, with diameter reductions from 0.456" to 0.451", from 0.451" to 0.446", from 0.446" to 0.441", and 0.441" to 0.439". I got plenty of drilling, boring, gauging and polishing practice out of this exercise. I also made a plunger of 0.435" diameter, with a projection on the end to go into the primer pockets and maintain their shape while the base swaging progressed. I figured the brass would spring back somewhat, to the proper base diameter of 0.445" or something close.

    I gave the shells a good anneal, a good ways down the bodies, and probably overdid it a bit. The Auto Shop next door had a honkin'-big hydraulic press that I had already used to broach some gears with, so I spent a couple evenings with it, the dies, the debelted shells, and a goodly amount of Imperial Sizing Lube. Eventually all the shells were pushed through all the dies, and it was on to the next step.

    I got out the .236 Navy die set, took the expander out of the FLS die, slathered the shells with Imperial Size Lube, and ran them through it. Didn't lose a one, and the necks were plenty long enough. I trimmed one to the proper length for the 2.35" long case, put it into the Straight-Pull's magazine and slammed it home. Not quite! the bolt bounced back into my hand, and the shell refused to fully chamber.

    I couldn't understand this. Called the die company and they said I was abusing their dies; was lucky I hadn't cracked it. Time was flying, other projects beckoned, so the shells were put into the "someday" box and other things taken up.

    I kept using, and grousing at, the expanded .220 Swift shells, but was lucky enough to find a handful of original WRA .236 Navy shells at a gun show. These didn't last very well; most season-cracked after a firing or so, but did show that except for aesthetics and ease of handling, the accuracy was not greatly improved by having the bullets in the leade the proper distance. My Winchester-Lee has the typical scabby bore of most of them; good for 2-1/2"-4-1/2" groups at 100 yards with jacketed, at 50 yards with cast. But, irrationally, I still didn't like the short-necked makeshifts.

    Now that I'm Retired, and under house arrest for the political crime of voting my Presidential choice, I had some time available to "revisit" this issue. Dug the old formed shells out and trimmed the rest of them to length. I went over them with calipers and micrometer and couldn't see anything seriously wrong. Running them through the FLS die again was effortless, but the things still wouldn't chamber. The four remaining original shells, run through the same die, chambered fine. Weird.

    In the interval, I had found an old optical comparator on Craigslist. I set an original and reformed shell next to each other, and compared the shadows. The reformed shell had a slightly sharper shoulder than the original; not bigger or wider or wrongly positioned, just very slightly sharper. I dug through my collection of forming, trimming and reloading dies (figured they'd be good for something, someday) and found a set for the 6 mm Ackley Short Krag. Somebody had added a cut-off .30-40 die to the set, so I carefully set this to just hit the corner of the .236 case shoulder, cutting the sharpness and rounding it, more like the Krag. Darned if the slight change didn't do it; the shell chambered without a bobble! I set the die for that length, ran the other 58 through, and found they wouldn't chamber.

    The first shell had been de-shouldered incrementally as I screwed in the die slightly and retested till it fit the rifle. The rest of them were just run into the die, at the last setting. The annealing had allowed the shell to bulge slightly, just below the rounded off portion. Another trip through the FLS die (with expander installed this time) and they all seemed to chamber. Finally. Apparently, there is some subtlety in the FLS die that doesn't quite do the shoulder right, unless it's already been fired in the gun. If I'd trained as a tool&diemaker, instead of a scientific genius, I might have figured this out in 20 seconds, instead of 20 years. Here's the sequence of shells: WRA original .236 Navy, reformed .220 Swift, .240 Weatherby Magnum and .240 Magnum reformed to .236 Navy.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    I expanded the necks with a .243 "M" die, loaded the cases with Ideal 245497s and typical light cast-boolit charges of Unique, 2400 and 4759, and went to the range to fire form them. A few of them refused to chamber, and the chambering of others was rather difficult, which I think resulted in a rather large variation in trigger pull weight, but I was getting a fair number of 2-1/4" groups at 50 yards, and no pressure excursions or other problems. When I got home, I ran the rounds that didn't chamber into the FLS die (expander removed again) and they chambered fine afterwards. I fired them into a few of the ground squirrel holes on the property, full-length resized them all, and primed them. Next time I try the Hornadys and Speers with full charges.

    I'd spoiled a few cases with that expander, so I took one of them and sectioned it to see how much brass was between me and ultimate disaster down at the base. It looks pretty good, if I do say so myself. Weatherby brass is made by Norma, so it's obviously good stuff. The bases are about 0.448". Primers went into the pockets with no trouble. Hopefully, the full-house loads will iron out the lube dents in the shoulders, and continued use will harden the shoulders a little.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    If I was a better diemaker, this might have been a much less laborious and lengthy a process, but at least it seems to have worked. I have another 60 once-fired .240 Weatherbys, if I ever have to do this again, but I hope not. The Lee Straight-Pull is a really Cool rifle, and shooting it (with proper ammo) is a lot of fun. Thanx and a wave of the Bent Ramrod to my gun-show buddy, the late, great Dave White, who got me interested in the Winchester-Lee.
    Last edited by Bent Ramrod; 07-13-2020 at 01:48 PM.

  2. #2
    Boolit Master
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    Great post!
    You are a man of incredible persistence .

  3. #3
    Boolit Master 444ttd's Avatar
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    x2 and x2!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    Ad Reipublicae his Civitatum Foederatarum Americae, ego sum fortis et libero. Ego autem non exieris ad impios communistarum socialismi. Ora imagines in vestri demented mentem, quod vos mos have misericordia, quia non.

    To the Republic of these United States of America, I am strong and free. I will never surrender to godless communist socialism. Pray to images in your demented mind, that you will have mercy, because i will not.

    MOLON LABE

  4. #4
    Boolit Master
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    One of the guys at sarco was reloading the Lee 236 navy and according to what I remember the rifle blew up killing him. Remember seeing it in one of the gun magazines at the time. I never found out what caused the accident. So at least in this caliber it would pay to be prudent. And if you haven't fired it yet use a long cord and a big tree for the first few times. Stay safe. Frank

  5. #5
    Boolit Master
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    There is indeed something strange about the workings of the Lee Straight-Pull. There is plenty of metal on the bottom of the bolt for lockup in the receiver, but the lockup is governed by a peculiar S-shaped spring down in the mechanism. When I bought my Sporting Model, this spring was missing, along with the barrel sights.

    The bolt ran home without this spring, but wouldn’t lock the cam down into the receiver. I borrowed a spring from one of Dave’s junkers he kept as a parts source, and got sights out of my own stash. With an empty chamber, or reformed.220 cases, the bolt slammed home and locked just fine. Minus the spring, you could pull it back&forth with one finger.

    An Internet search got me S&S Firearms, which provided an aftermarket spring so I could give Dave his spring back. Talk about National Treasures—that place is high in the list for aficionados of oddball military stuff.

    If the shells are just slightly off, though, the bolt will not quite go all the way home. The usual warning sign is that you can’t see the rear sight over the rear of the bolt, and the firing pin isn’t protruding out the rear. More hazardous is the situation where the bolt is almost down, the firing pin protrudes, and you can see the sights. If the locking cam is in there good enough, but not quite all the way, the firing pin will snap, dimpling the primer but (in my experience) not setting it off. Sometimes the round can be removed and slammed home again, for full lockup, and the gun will fire normally. “Normally,” though, all that usually results is the same incomplete lockup and a sore hand; the Lee has no cramming action for cartridge seating at all.

    Another scenario is where the bolt goes even closer to home, but not quite. Here, the gun will fire, although the trigger pull becomes extremely hard. This is the reason my first trials of the new cases were with light cast boolit loads. I figured anything that would chamber and fire would have low enough pressure so that less-than-total lockup would not be disastrous. And so it proved.

    A friend here recently let me fire one of his Swiss straight-pull rifles. The first round I pushed home, the gun wouldn’t fire. He explained that the Swiss had an interference in the firing mechanism so it wouldn’t function unless the bolt was totally locked. Even with that fine mechanism, you have to slam the bolt home hard, just like the Lee, the Mannlicher Straight-Pull, and the Ross. No interference mechanism on the last three, and the Ross is even scarier than the Lee.

    It may be that the poor guy whose Straight-Pull blew up and killed him had a full-charge reload with an over sensitive primer which fired the cartridge with this incomplete lockup. I understand he was using reformed Krag cases, and may have had a slightly sticky cartridge. Or it could have been an overload. One of Dave’s pals blew up one of his Lees. (He loved to try out his advanced ideas and experiments on other peoples’ equipment.) He had a complicated explanation involving a rough throat, SEE, deflagration-to-detonation transition, Y(t)=MX^9+Z^n, not-my-fault, etc, but I still think he was getting a little too near the edge with IMR-3031. He returned Dave’s gun with the receiver expertly brazed back together and allegedly “good as new;” a sight to make a handloader’s blood run cold. Of course, the pal came out of it without a scratch, to go on and ruin more of other peoples’ Stuff. The Air Force should drop him on Tehran; the Mullahs would be begging to surrender in a week.

    Well, now I’ve managed to scare myself. Think I’ll try another round or two of cast boolit loads, just in case, before going to jacketed.

  6. #6
    Boolit Master
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    Nice project. My Swiss straight pull is a great gun. Wish I bought more when they started importing them brand new for 49$

  7. #7
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    Great report
    and Also you can reduce the height of the shell holder just a bit
    to get a custom fit
    Again, great report
    Mike
    NRA Benefactor 2004 USAF RET 1971-95

  8. #8
    Boolit Buddy Lostinidaho's Avatar
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    Wow, that's a lot of work. I really like shooting my Lee Navy. I used .220 swift. I wish the .220 had longer necks. I have seen where people have made 6mm Lee Navy from .25-06. These don't extract in my rife. So I have stuck with the .220 swift. I shoot lower power rounds. Its a good little pinker rifle to 150 yards.

    You explanation of bolt closure makes me wonder about safety.

  9. #9
    Boolit Master
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    I’ve gotten into the habit of yanking back on the bolt handle when it’s forward, and checking the fit of the cam into its socket ahead of the handle. This with my reformed .240 cases; except for the short neck objection, there’s never been a problem with the neck-expanded .220 brass.

    Wow, .25-06 is a lot of swaging down to do. The solid brass around the web springs back considerably. What is the base diameter of your reformed .25-06? The shells I’ve made extract surprisingly easily, the ones that chamber and even those that stick.

    I read a fair amount about the new Navy rifle and cartridge in Shooting and Fishing, and there was never a mention of blowups. Also never a mention of them in everything I’ve read about the Boxer Rebellion and the various Philippine and Central American campaigns they were used in. Nothing like the Ross rifle, whose problems and blowups were reported almost from the start.

  10. #10
    Boolit Buddy Lostinidaho's Avatar
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    Buffalo Arms sells the reformed .25-06. I bought a few before I tried .220 brass

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    Boolit Master 444ttd's Avatar
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    just for kicks, i tried the 6mm lee navy brass. its is NOT what i expected!!!!! for $5.38 for one piece of brass, i'd go the way bent ramrod does.

    https://www.rccbrass.com/product/6mm-us-navy/
    Ad Reipublicae his Civitatum Foederatarum Americae, ego sum fortis et libero. Ego autem non exieris ad impios communistarum socialismi. Ora imagines in vestri demented mentem, quod vos mos have misericordia, quia non.

    To the Republic of these United States of America, I am strong and free. I will never surrender to godless communist socialism. Pray to images in your demented mind, that you will have mercy, because i will not.

    MOLON LABE

  12. #12
    Boolit Buddy Lostinidaho's Avatar
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    What were the cases like. I have needed to order some 56-50 rimfire cartridges. RCC has them, but also expensive including minimum order. Just wonder what they make cartridges like.

  13. #13
    Boolit Master
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    There comes a time in every Loader lifetime where he wants to Load the 6mm Remington Lee. I new the gentleman @ Sarco for many years. He was told many time about The results but Decided not to listen.
    There are certain rifles should Not be shot. The Remington Lee is One of them. If you choose as he did not to listen. The result will be the same
    Good luck on Your new endeavor
    NRA Endowment Member
    International Ammunition Association
    New York, the Empire State Where Empires were Won and Lost

  14. #14
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    The 6mm Lee Navy is a straight pull Winchester. Remington Lees are the turn bolt predecessor of the Lee Enfields.

    Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

  15. #15
    Boolit Buddy
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    Quote Originally Posted by samari46 View Post
    One of the guys at sarco was reloading the Lee 236 navy and according to what I remember the rifle blew up killing him. Remember seeing it in one of the gun magazines at the time. I never found out what caused the accident. So at least in this caliber it would pay to be prudent. And if you haven't fired it yet use a long cord and a big tree for the first few times. Stay safe. Frank
    He was using reformed .30-40 Krag brass.

    https://www.forgottenweapons.com/win...e-navy-safety/
    Fifty years a lawyer and you still look down your nose at your fellow citizens who study and know law better than you. Every
    citizen is an attorney.

  16. #16
    Boolit Master
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    I’m not an expert on blowups (thank heaven!), but that vastly expanded primer pocket in the still-chambered shell in the Lee barrel says “overload” to me. As well as the bullet not exiting the barrel before the receiver ring let go. Insufficient brass around the primer pocket, caused by thinning the base of the .30-40 shells, would not help things, either.

    The metal on the receiver looks “crystallized,” as they used to call it. Rather than trying to blow up yet another Lee-Navy, some hardness testing, surface and internal, on the wrecked gun might yield some more useful data.

    Interesting to see that the bolt stayed locked. I noticed that my sticky cast-boolit loads that chambered completely enough to fire caused the bolt to lock up fully afterwards. The cam was completely seated in its socket after firing, and the shells extracted easily.

    I forget the exact location of the braze lines in Dave’s blown-up Lee. Shuddered and turned away, like an amateur at an autopsy. Should have looked more carefully.

  17. #17
    Boolit Master
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    Not to hijack the thread, but is this the ammo you're discussing? The box has 4 rounds in it.

  18. #18
    Boolit Buddy
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    Yes. That is the cartridge.
    Fifty years a lawyer and you still look down your nose at your fellow citizens who study and know law better than you. Every
    citizen is an attorney.

  19. #19
    Boolit Man
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    Making these cases is a trip based on my experience making one case. A friend is one of these people who show up with all sorts of wild and crazy stuff. This was many years ago. He came in with a set of RCBS dies to make 6mm LN from 30-06 brass. Using these dies it took me a day to make the case working on and off. He probably still has these dies. I took my only LN case and necked it down to 220 Swift. This was to confound the guru's who claimed it was impossible to make Swift brass from 30-06. What was a real killer in his mess was a set of RCBS to make 7.65 French brass from 30 carbine. Instructions for that set were handwritten. Point being, as OP pointed out, making the Lee Navy cases is not for the faint hearted.

  20. #20
    Boolit Master
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    I generally have little interest in "Closure," unless it's refrigerator doors or washer/dryer lids. But just to put a coda on this case-forming investigation for the Record, I here report that I finally took the new cases out, with full loadings behind jacketed bullets, to see how they performed.

    Loads were made up in the drastically reformed .240 Weatherby Magnum shells with Winchester Large rifle primers, and Speer 105 gr roundnose or Hornady 100 gr roundnose bullets. Three powders were tried: IMR-4895, IMR-4320 and IMR-4064. Loadings in all cases were 30.0gr, 31.0gr, 32.0gr and 33.0gr. Groups were 4 or 5 shots at 100 yards, with notch and bead barrel sights.

    I had changed the sight elevation and so missed the targets with the 30.0 gr load of 4895/Speer 105, but five-shot groups with the other loadings were 2-1/8", 4" and 3".

    With the Hornady 100 gr and 4320, the groups were 1-1/2" (4 shots), 3-1/2" (4 shots), 3-1/2" (5 shots) and 2-1/2" (4 shots).

    With the Speer 105 gr and 4064, the groups were 2-1/4", 4-3/4", 2-5/8" and 2-7/8".

    No problems with the rifle; it locked up, fired, unlocked and extracted/ejected fine. No pressure signs and the only casualties were two neck cracks and a slight lengthening of the necks in almost all the cases. I trimmed them back to just under 2.35" and annealed the necks and shoulders again. The pressures were not sufficient to iron out the lube dents in the shoulders of the cases. I single loaded; next time I'll try the magazine and the "rapid-fire principle" the rifle was designed for. The grip on the bullets by the proper length necks allows for that kind of handling; I was reluctant to try with the reformed .220 Swift cases.

    The groups didn't seem to point anywhere much as the loads increased. The only real conclusion was that groups in the 4" range, which used to be the average using the short-necked .220 Swift cases, were not all that common with these shells of the proper neck length. It's never going to be a target rifle, with the somewhat eroded bore, but it seems now that, with the longer necks and the bullet further into the chamber leade, groups may now have begun to be influenced more by my eyes getting tired of focusing on the bead height in the rear notch and the trigger pull (perhaps better described by the Navy term "haul"), than the actual powder charge. the 3"-4" groups were clusters of several close ones with a high shot or two spoiling things. Nonetheless, I was happy to start with the 30 gr 4064 load when I reloaded all the shells; The group was small and I can't imagine three more grains of powder will make a great deal of ballistic difference.

    I was trying to cobble together a copy of the Lyman peep sight for this model and ran into problems with getting the peep to tip or rock out of the way as the bolt rises and comes back. I need to revisit this; if I can get it to work, it will definitely help with the sight picture.

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check