.45 ACP Winchester NT cases

[beagle]

I have a fair quantity of Winchester .45 ACP NT (non-toxic) cases with the large flash hole. I ran into them the other day when doing some sorting.

Has anyone loaded them and if so, does the large flash hole make any difference?

/beagle

[StarMetal]

Beagle,

The one thing I think of is if you were running some really hot loads it may put some extra force on the primer, but I really don't see that in a 45acp. Now if it was a rifle round you probably would see it blowing the primer. How much larger is it then a normal flash hole?

Also it would let alot more primer flash and force into the case and powder charge. How that would affect accuracy is hard to tell.

Joe

[johniv]

Winchester says the larger flash hole makes no difference?! I havent loaded any of them yet so cant say from experience. I think the larger flash hole is due to greater force of the non-lead primer, some non-lead primers have been prone to leak around the primer pocket and gas cut the face of the slide, as seen in old military bolt faces. I always thought this was a slow process, but acording to some ammo people it happens with only a few rounds. Anyhoo the large flash hole mimimizes this by letting more of the force of the primer into the case . Some companies use a small primer (Fed. I think) in 45 acp possably for the same reason.?!? Anyone know for sure??
John

[Johnch]

I found a bunch in range brass I picked up .
So I tryed them
Winchester brass for both standard flash hole and NT

4 Gr of American Select , WW LP and a 200 gr cast TC bullet

I didn't check velosity , but at 25 yds both groups were the same ( as good as I can shoot off hand )

All the cases ended in the same pile and all primers looked the same

So I load them the same .

But the steel cases I found are another test I am trying .

Johnch

[StarMetal]

Like I mentioned I would think there would be a pressure issue with the 45acp's low pressure to start with. I was more concerned if the accuracy would change any and apparently not.

Joe

[redneckdan]

other people hate them...I love them. same primer size as .357 mag so I only have to stock one size of primer.

[StarMetal]

This is interesting. I'll tell you why. There is a conversion for the 45acp called the 38/45. That's a 45acp necked down to either 9mm or .357. Mine is 9mm. The round looks really cool. Originally it intended for a reliable feeding target round, but it didn't take reloader long to realize that's alot of powder behind a 9mm and start hot rodding it. One of the problems with that is pressure and mainly with the primer flowing back into the firing pin hole and then a donut of primer cup material is shaved off upon ejection. One fix was to drill and bush your large pistol firing pin to the smaller small piston size. Alot of fellows didn't want to do this. I didn't do this with mine. The other was using rifle primer and or using 308 cases cut down to 38/45 size with rifle primers. Lot of work. Now you talk about these new small primered WW cases. I wonder how they would work for my 38/45? One thing with a 45acp size firing pin you have to be darn sure it strikes the primer pretty much centered to be used with those small pistol primers. If any of you have done 1911 pistol smithing, especially welding up the barrel for a match fit and seating it deeper into the slides locking lug recesses you'll know that this can make the firing pin very much off center.

Joe

[beagle]

Yeah, Winchester also made some with small primer pockets. I've used them with small pistol primers in a Blackhawk convertible and you can get away with a little more powder, more velocity and less pressure but in a M1911A1, I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and try some./beagle

.
Winchester says the larger flash hole makes no difference?! I havent loaded any of them yet so cant say from experience. I think the larger flash hole is due to greater force of the non-lead primer, some non-lead primers have been prone to leak around the primer pocket and gas cut the face of the slide, as seen in old military bolt faces. I always thought this was a slow process, but acording to some ammo people it happens with only a few rounds. Anyhoo the large flash hole mimimizes this by letting more of the force of the primer into the case . Some companies use a small primer (Fed. I think) in 45 acp possably for the same reason.?!? Anyone know for sure??
John

[beagle]

John...kind of figured that so I'll go ahead and use them.

Now, steel cases are different. I've never tried loading any of this "wolfman" stuff but I did load some old EC stuff once. It loaded all right but but you better have TC dies. I also snatched the extractor hook off a M1911A1 doing that so extraction is, well, let's say "enhanced"./beagle


I found a bunch in range brass I picked up .
So I tryed them
Winchester brass for both standard flash hole and NT

4 Gr of American Select , WW LP and a 200 gr cast TC bullet

I didn't check velosity , but at 25 yds both groups were the same ( as good as I can shoot off hand )

All the cases ended in the same pile and all primers looked the same

So I load them the same .

But the steel cases I found are another test I am trying .

Johnch

[beagle]

There's two different varieties of Winchester NT.

I have some that takes small primers also. I like them.

Then, there's a batch out that takes large primers and has a huge flash hole. This is the ones that I am messing with right now and posted the question about./beagle


other people hate them...I love them. same primer size as .357 mag so I only have to stock one size of primer.

[beagle]

Joe, it might work out for you. As I mentioned previously, I was able to load hotter with the small pocket cases and got less pressure than with the same cases and the large pistol primers.

It's worth a try.

Don't know where you could get a large quantity. I've only seen two or three boxes at our range./beagle


This is interesting. I'll tell you why. There is a conversion for the 45acp called the 38/45. That's a 45acp necked down to either 9mm or .357. Mine is 9mm. The round looks really cool. Originally it intended for a reliable feeding target round, but it didn't take reloader long to realize that's alot of powder behind a 9mm and start hot rodding it. One of the problems with that is pressure and mainly with the primer flowing back into the firing pin hole and then a donut of primer cup material is shaved off upon ejection. One fix was to drill and bush your large pistol firing pin to the smaller small piston size. Alot of fellows didn't want to do this. I didn't do this with mine. The other was using rifle primer and or using 308 cases cut down to 38/45 size with rifle primers. Lot of work. Now you talk about these new small primered WW cases. I wonder how they would work for my 38/45? One thing with a 45acp size firing pin you have to be darn sure it strikes the primer pretty much centered to be used with those small pistol primers. If any of you have done 1911 pistol smithing, especially welding up the barrel for a match fit and seating it deeper into the slides locking lug recesses you'll know that this can make the firing pin very much off center.

Joe

[Buckshot]

.........Beagle, "Now, steel cases are different. I've never tried loading any of this "wolfman" stuff but I did load some old EC stuff once. It loaded all right but but you better have TC dies. I also snatched the extractor hook off a M1911A1 doing that so extraction is, well, let's say "enhanced".

When I was doing experimental loading for a 45ACP carbine, I'd been using some CCC headstamped brass. I think this stuff had been made in the Phillipines. A friend and I bought a 1000 rnd crate of it from "The Olde Sacramento Armory" several years before, so I had plenty of empties.

I don't have a lot of experience with 45 ACP brass, but I suspect this stuff was cheaply made. The casewalls had almost no inward thickening down toward the base. Looking inside they pretty much went straight down, and down where the walls would curve into the base there was an annular ring.

I took that as being an artifact left by the head of the draw die punch. So, with that out of the way, I was happily merrily sending off cast and jacketed slugs of varying weights and designs at some really speedy speeds and enjoying myself immensly in the process. For some reason one day I happened to peer down into the fat pudgy cases and I thought there was a fouling ring or something.

It turned out to be a crack. Outwardly there was no indication of a problem. I checked more and more of the batch of 50 I'd been using, and almost everyone had this crack developing. Had it continued, quite possibly it would have finally opened into the extractor groove. I shucked that batch of 50.

Coincidently a couple weeks later our range manager gave me a couple hundred EC43 steel cases. They had a bit of faint rust spots inside due to the corrosive primers, but cleaned up real nice. THESE were the cases I used to finish up the more hair raising tests I had in mind, and they trooped along just fine. I'd heard of problems with reloaded steel cases in auto pistols, but in this bolt action carbine they were the bee's knees.

...............Buckshot

[StarMetal]

Those CCC casings are junk along with alot of brass from Mexico, as you found out.

Joe

[beagle]

Rick...the old EC stuff wasn't bad. When I was messing with it, I got some fairly fresh stuff as it has a kind of lacquer on the cases. They didn't load bad at all but they were hell on dies.

After breaking the extractor, I stopped that nonsense. Shot the remainder in a M1917 Colt with half moons. Talk about hard extraction. Had to have adowel and hammer almost to get them out of the cylinder.

Fun to mess with but darn, there's plenty of brass cases around so that you don't have to mess with that old junk....except to see if you can./beagle


.........Beagle, "Now, steel cases are different. I've never tried loading any of this "wolfman" stuff but I did load some old EC stuff once. It loaded all right but but you better have TC dies. I also snatched the extractor hook off a M1911A1 doing that so extraction is, well, let's say "enhanced".

When I was doing experimental loading for a 45ACP carbine, I'd been using some CCC headstamped brass. I think this stuff had been made in the Phillipines. A friend and I bought a 1000 rnd crate of it from "The Olde Sacramento Armory" several years before, so I had plenty of empties.

I don't have a lot of experience with 45 ACP brass, but I suspect this stuff was cheaply made. The casewalls had almost no inward thickening down toward the base. Looking inside they pretty much went straight down, and down where the walls would curve into the base there was an annular ring.

I took that as being an artifact left by the head of the draw die punch. So, with that out of the way, I was happily merrily sending off cast and jacketed slugs of varying weights and designs at some really speedy speeds and enjoying myself immensly in the process. For some reason one day I happened to peer down into the fat pudgy cases and I thought there was a fouling ring or something.

It turned out to be a crack. Outwardly there was no indication of a problem. I checked more and more of the batch of 50 I'd been using, and almost everyone had this crack developing. Had it continued, quite possibly it would have finally opened into the extractor groove. I shucked that batch of 50.

Coincidently a couple weeks later our range manager gave me a couple hundred EC43 steel cases. They had a bit of faint rust spots inside due to the corrosive primers, but cleaned up real nice. THESE were the cases I used to finish up the more hair raising tests I had in mind, and they trooped along just fine. I'd heard of problems with reloaded steel cases in auto pistols, but in this bolt action carbine they were the bee's knees.

...............Buckshot

[Johnch]

I have a 98 mauser chambered in 45 ACP so I was toying with the idea of trying the steel cases with some high pressure loads .

But I probley just pitch them

I have to many projects now [smilie=l: to do it right .


Johnch

[Vly]

Beagle - I had a bunch of those Win case with the big flash hole in the large primer pocket. A load which shoots pretty well for me in "regular" cases began to show what I interpreted to be high pressure signs - primer flow. The load was a H&G #68 over 4.2 grs of Hodgdon Clays. This load chronos about 825 fps in my Kimber. I stopped using them because I had lots of the other brass. Didn't seem worth any possible risk. YMMV

[robertbank]

For the price of .45acp once fired brass I would toss that steel stuff in the garbage. Why bother with it when regular brass is kicking around. You can reload .45acp cases until they eventually split. I have some going on 20 reloads.

Stay Safe

[johniv]

45 cases split? I thought ya lost em long before that?!
John

[REDWUN]

yes i have about handful of those 45 ACP with large primer holes strange. out of the few thousand i have the primer hole is about twice the size or more here is a picture does anyone know why?

http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/7180/45acplargeprimer.jpg

or copy paste link

[Four Fingers of Death]

Wow! that is a big hole, be good for wax boolits wouldn't it? :D
Four Fingers.

[REDWUN]

thanks for the info.

[rdr202]

I found one piece of Winchester Brass NT with small primer pocket while reloading. Primer would not seat when I looked at case it looks like it had a military crimp on the original primer. Question is does Winchester make military crimped .45 ACP small primer for civilians.or was this a piece of military brass?

[MostlyLeverGuns]

Somewhere Larry Gibson did some pressure testing with enlarged primer flash holes, I think it was with a a .308, he did not find any significant issues with the the drilled flash holes with 'normal' rifle pressure. I have loaded drilled primer pockets for rifle with no differences observed in primer pressure signs in the 32 Special and 35 Remington from popgun loads to full pressure loads from various manuals. The larger flash hole was for the 'Non Toxic' or unleaded primers, needed because the Non Toxic primers are milder than those containing lead styphnate.

[ReloaderFred]

The larger flash hole was for the 'Non Toxic' or unleaded primers, needed because the Non Toxic primers are milder than those containing lead styphnate.

Actually, it's just the opposite. The Diazodinitrophenol (DDNP) primers have a much higher brisance than the Lead Styphnate primers, and the enlarged flash holes were to release the pressure from the primer pocket faster. The increased brisance was causing the DDNP, or Non-Toxic, primers to flatten against the recoil shield before the case had a chance to move back from the pressure of the burning powder and reseat the primers in the pockets.

Hope this helps.

Fred