The "peanut" for a 32-20 Winchester reloading tool (usually missing)

[Harry O]

Attached is a sketch and a photo of an original "peanut" (decapping piece) for a 32-20 Winchester reloading tool. Those of you who are machinists (or know someone who is) can duplicate it for your reloading tool. I have actually used this tool for reloading some 32-20's. Slow, but it works.

Does anyone have an original 38-40 and/or 44-40 "peanut" they can measure and post here?

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[victorfox]

I'm very ignorant in many things related to firearms due to living in a restrictive country (Brazil), and grew only shooting .22s and a 32ga single shot (no reloading for us without army permissions except for shotshells). This "peanut" decaps and bells the case mouth am I correct? Never saw this tool before (not even in pics I mean).

[Harry O]

It looks to me like it decaps only. It does round out the mouth, it it is out-of-round (stepped on). There is no place to flare the mouth, at least that I can see. I loaded up a few with beveled-base bullets and they seated without cutting off a strip of lead. If you have a plain-base bullet with sharp corners, I would recommend using a slightly oversized ball-bearing to flare it slightly. I don't know how much you can flare it before the tool doesn't work, but I would think it would tolerate only a very small flare. The tool does crimp the bullet. BTW, this is for the 1882 reloading tool.

[Harry O]

Bump to the top. Is there another place that this should be posted? I have the 38-40 and 44-40 Winchester reloading tools, without the peanut, and would like to complete them. From what I have, I could guess at the dimensions, but I would like to copy them (first) if possible.

[GL49]

http://www.antiquereloadingtools.com/

Maybe this would help

[victorfox]

Thanks for the answer!

[bedbugbilly]

I have two of the Winchester tools for the 32-20 - both missing the de-capper. I have tried them both out just loading dummy rounds with a boolit from an original 32 WCF mold. As Harry O points out, a bevel base boolit would work the best especially with the fragile 32 WCF casing. Both of the Winchester tools I have did a decent job of seating/crimping the dummy round though. Not the fastest method as mentioned, but not unlike using the Lyman 310 tools. Kind of nice though to use these old tools to load like our ancestors did when the primary purpose was to put meat on the table and not making large quantities of ammo to blast away at paper, etc. Unfortunately, I have everything to re-load 32-20 but have not found anything yet to shoot them in! Until then, my Winchester tools take up a prized spot in my tong tools.

Thanks for the drawing. I just wished I still had access to a lathe and a mill. It would be nice if a "sticky" could be started in the hand reloading tool section here where drawings such as this could be collected and shared. So many of these old Winchester tools are found without the de-priming part which, I'm sure, was easily lost along the way.

Thanks for the posting and sharing!