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Pictures of making and shooting 45acp shotshell case
I am posting results and pictures of making cases and patterning the 45 acp shotshell. What I have proven to myself in this process is that GRUMPA's idea does work and in fact works quite well. My thanks to him for providing the procedure and plans if you will for creation of these shotshells. I had no way to hold the brass for processing like he did so I devised a simple jig of 3/4" pine with a 15/32" hole for holding the brass at the proper depth for cutting and filing to rough length. After chamfering and annealing I proceeded with the neck reduction using a 40 S&W sizing die. As GRUMPA stated, it is important to have your 45acp barrel handy to let you know when you achieve the proper body length which will allow the new case to properly headspace in the barrel. It does this on the newly created shoulder after case forming. Go easy. You get to the proper length before you think you will. I ruined my first two because I did it until it looked right rather than trying it in the barrel chamber. I used his load recipe, along with a homemade cardboard op wad. I used a dipper but weighed the #7 1/2 shot load to 122 grains. I used a .375 gc over the shot. I achieved a roll crimp using my .45acp seating die. My case neck was a little too big to start with so I used my 500 S&W seating die to start and finished up with the acp die. I have shown pictures of a factory shotshell for comparison with the newly made shotshell. I was impressed with the similiarity between the two!! I then did a comparison at the pattern board at 5 yards. This can hardly be called a conclusive test comparing the factory to the homemade shotshell. However if it shows up well enough in the picture you will be able to see that the two shells have very comparable patterns. The difference in appearance is result of the factory using #9 shot, while I used #71/2 in mine. I have some #9, but I felt the larger shot would result in more penetration than the #9 would so that is what I chose. Fact is in my test both loads patterned almost the same percentage of shot on the cardboard at 5 yards with a calculated 77% for the handmade vs 80% for the factory. For my next go around I will use a BPI op card cut to half thickness. I will also trim the finished formed brass to 1.180" prior to loading. Hopefully this will allow the cases to work in my magazine. The others were slightly too long to work smoothly. The load did eject and I feel will work the action ok once the right length is found. Personally I am going to good smooth function rather than trying to maximize the shot load which might require each round being individually loaded in the chamber. I am not too good at this picture thing, so I hope this all works when I push the send button. Thanks for taking the time to read my rambling and thanks GRUMPA for the initial idea that pushed me over the edge to give this a try.Attachment 62879Attachment 62886Attachment 62885Attachment 62884Attachment 62883Attachment 62881Attachment 62880