British Snider fireforming CBC brass

[craig61a]

I took my British Snider out last Saturday to fire some brass I had made up from CBC 24 gauge shot shells using the Lee die. I wanted to fire form the brass so I could get an idea of the diameters for that particular rifle. The case mouths on the brass felt a little 'wavy' and after checking the diameter with a caliper I found that the inside diameter varied from about .598" to .605". I plan on trimming the case OAL down to 1.9" also.

Now I was hoping that all I'd have to do was find the right sized boolit and just re-prime, add BP, wads etc. and repeat. Alas I see neck sizing the Snider brass in my future just get it back to being round. Other than having a custom die made for this, I'm just wondering if anyone else out there has encountered this and if there is a stock die available to do this resizing. I'm guessing that the opening should run about .630" as I think I will most likely need a .600" boolit for good accuracy.

I have done the .600" round ball and plastic cheddite hull thing and that's pretty darn accurate. I want to get the brass case ammo to shoot at least as good.

[elk hunter]

I use both CBC 24 gauge brass and some original Kynoch Snider brass in my Mk III. Currently I'm using a set of Lee dies to load a 515 grain .585 diameter round nose patched to .594 diameter ahead of 20 grains of Trail Boss. I'm still playing with loads for this rifle. Last week shooting this load for the first time I put four rounds into about 3/4" at 25 yards. I pulled the fifth shot out about an inch from the others. I have loaded ten more to try this week. If it will repeat the above group I'll be very happy as prior to this most loads would just stay on a target at 25 yards.

[craig61a]

Well I've run 65 - 85 of 2F through it so far. 70 gr of 2F for the Cheddite hulls, 65 gr 2F to fire form the CBC brass. I read else were that 85 gr is the load for distances over 200 yards, I haven't tried it yet. There isn't a whole lot of stuff available for this large caliber. I have the Lee dies which is what I used to size my CBC brass. They work work the brass way too much. For fire forming I used 65 gr 2F and a .578 Lee Minie. As I mentioned I'm looking to probably go .600" for a cast boolit for this Snider.

I'm thinking I may have to get a neck die built so I can even out the out of round case mouths for this rifle...

[elk hunter]

There is no way I could chamber a round with a .600 diameter bullet in it. I had to really push hard to chamber them with a .598 diameter bullet and some of those wouldn't go in far enough to close the breech. If yours will, then I would just fireform and hand seat a bullet in the case if the bullet will stay in place. I wanted ammunition that could be carried and not fall apart so I must have enough case neck tension to hold the bullet in place. I tried patched minies but could only just keep them on the paper at 25 yards no matter what diameter they were or how I loaded them. I anneal the cases every few loadings and so far have only lost those that were too hard when I ran them through the sizing die the first time. As for your out-of-round case mouths perhaps a new neck expander plug would do what you want. If not, a custom neck sizing die would work but, unless you can make it, it will be expensive. Hope you get this working for you.

[craig61a]

Well I'll probably start with .600" round balls in the cases and see how well that works... I was concerned that seating in the out of round mouth might damage the boolit somewhat, but I'll see what happens.

Oh and btw, it seems everything is a little spendy with these old rifles... ;)

[craig61a]

Was in the shop working on something else and came across the fired brass. So I started going through sockets and found an 11mm that was just a little bigger than the mouth. Pressed it in maybe 1/4", removed then ran it up in the Lee die until I had .600". And it went .625 OD.

[craig61a]

I was looking at CH4D and they have a Snider neck sizing die. I think they might make to dimensions I specify so there's my answer. I will need to fire form some brass in my other Snider then have a die made that will work for both.

[bonza]

I have four British-made Sniders, 2x military, 2x commercial, & fire-formed CBC/MagTech cases from each will all take .600" bullets. My best results have been with a 530gn .600" solid base conical bullet cast from pure lead, over 72.5gns of KIK 1.5Fg & 2.2cc of CofW it will put ten rounds in a 4" or so group at 100yds fired prone over cross sticks, from either of my two 3-band Sniders.

[Argentino]

I also had some troubles when trying to chamber a .600" boolit. There was no way of doing that with a standard lenght case. So my approach was diferent: I tried breech seating instead: measured the chamber lenght, placed a boolit well ahead of it (touching the lands) and cut my cases to lenght from boolit base to breech block face. I´m still trying several BP loads and I need to use a filler (cornmeal) to complete fill up to the top of the case so no air space gets between the boolit and a loaded shell.
It´s somewhat time consuming to do this breech seating technique and messy when it comes to handle a sticky/greasy boolit with your fingers to place it in front of a loaded case but by doing this I was able to shoot a .600" solid base boolit that my Snider seems to like. Accuracy at 50 yards had been satisfying so far.