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.
Attachment 264661
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.
Attachment 264663
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.
