Resize or not...

[Battis]

I formed a bunch of .41 Swiss cases from .348 brass, loaded them and fired them off. To seat the bullet, I expanded the mouth with a .44 mag expander die, seated the bullet with the 10mm socket bit as a seater, then resized the mouth to flatten the flare from the expanding. To deprime them I used the 50-70 sizer/ deprimer die and it worked great - popped out the primer but never touched the case. As the fired cases are now, a bullet will not hand-seat. So, should I fully resize the cases or just expand the mouth for loading, then flatten the flare? Is there an advantage to resizing?

[I'll Make Mine]

There are two significant advantages to not resizing, other than the neck if needed to provide case tension and retain the bullet. First, the unsized case will fit closely in the chamber, giving a more consistent position and better concentricity of the bullet compared to a sized case (which will be slightly to grossly undersize for your chamber, depending on the rifle and dies); second, the less you work your brass, the longer it'll last. Flaring just enough to seat a bullet, and sizing the neck just enough to take out the flare, will give best brass life (you might still want to anneal the case mouths every ten loadings or so, since the part that gets flared and unflared will still work harden).

[Nobade]

Are you saying a boolit won't go into a fired case? If this is the case, perhaps the cases are a touch too long. With that tapered neck on the Vetterli, the mouth gets smaller as it gets longer. I like to trim the cases so a boolit will just enter after it has been fired. You could certainly expand the mouth to accept a new boolit, but then the case would be hard to chamber. At any rate, there's no need to resize the cases for that rifle.

And I'm glad to hear you got it up and running! They are a lot of fun to work with, aren't they?

-Nobade

[Battis]

I tried hand seating a bullet into a fired case but it will not fit unless I flare the mouth. The cases are cut to 1.60" or a little less. The cases chamber just fine, though I did file off some brass just under the mouth on each. After I flare the mouth and seat the bullet, I run just the neck through the sizer (decapping pin removed) and it flattens the flare (I got that tip on the Swiss rifle forum).
I think that if I used a shorter case, that stubby .430 bullet might be too short.
I brought the Trapdoor 50-70 and the Vetterli to the range. I had reduced loads of FFG in the Trapdoor and about 45 grs in the Vetterli. The Trapdoor still kicks the **** out of me but the Vetterli goes easy on me. At 50 yds, the Vetterli punches neat little holes in neat little groups, but I'm all over the place with the Trapdoor. The Vetterli is a great gun, fun to shoot, temperamental, but we'll work out our differences.

[Nobade]

You're right on track! Once I figured out how to make the Vetterli work I am always amazed at the accuracy and how nice it is to shoot. Heavy rifle, not much gunpowder, and a nice trigger pull add up to a very shootable rifle that is a lot of fun. Just wait until you have the chance to shoot it at longer ranges. Those issue sights are well calibrated and make it easy to make hits on things waaaay out there. It always amazes the tactical crowd at our range after they miss targets with their big scopes and handheld computers and then I hit them with my old black powder rifle. Of course they do have to be big enough to see....

-Nobade