reloading starter blanks?

[curator]

Kootne and Willis both offered the best advise here. Wads are problematic in any blank cartridge fired in a dedicated blank gun. Having made both "theatrical" blanks for stage-plays and reenactor blanks, I would use about 10 grains of FFFg black powder then fill the case to the mouth with cream of wheat (semolina) cereal. I would then compress the load and refill with more cream of wheat until the case was full and compressed hard. As long as these are not subjected to a lot of rough handling they are fine as is and won't create dangerous fragments past 10 feet. If I am storing them for a future event or carrying them in a pocket, I melt some bee's wax and brush a very thin coating over the exposed charge. These are quite loud in a small blank gun but do require cleaning after firing.

[dfergus]

curator says kootne and wills had the best advice, but I would respectfully disagree. What they are not taking into account is that the NEF Starter pistol commonly used by T&F Starters (of whom I am one) does not have an open barrel. As described above, there is 1/4" gap between the front of the cylinder and the back of the gun frame in front of the cylinder. There is an angled protrusion that comes out of this frame wall, and it serves two purposes. One is to prevent loading real bullets into the cylinder, and the second is to break the cardboard wad and divert the expelled gases and wad to the sides. The Winchester wads usually do break up into bits, but the Remington wads tend to build up on the peak of this protrusion and need to be knocked off every other shot or so. I bought some good wads in 32 caliber from Track of the Wolf in Elk River manufactured by CircleFly. The only time I have had flashover into other shells not indexed, is when using pyro shells which are star crimped (somewhat imperfectly crimped) allowing powder residue to leak out the crimp, and flashover when an adjacent shell is fired. I have sometimes had three shells ignite at once, and the people around will notice and say "That was a really loud shell!" I recommend not crimping and using wads so you can reuse the brass over and over.

[dfergus]

BTW, the cost of a box of 50 shells is more like $50 now, which is $1/shell. BUT that assumes they are not out of stock. It seems Winchester may only tool up to produce blanks about once a year. There are none available ANYWHERE right now. As a track starter, I may have to start reloading for my friends and fellow starters here in the state if shells don't become more available. Hopefully, they are saving their brass like I saved mine....

[Nickel City Dude]

I recently made about 2000 .32 blanks for some Track and Field referee’s. I used the old Winchester brass that they have been saving, a small pistol primer, a ¼” felt wad all done up with a star crimp. They are working fine lots of smoke & noise and no chain fires.
I have been unable to get the Winchester black powder blanks in either .22 or .32 so necessity is the mother of invention, I made my own. When the used .32 brass runs out I figure I can use .32 long brass and just cut it down on the band saw like I do for making 380 blanks out of .38 special brass.

[cajun shooter]

I made some BP blanks out of the 5-1 cases that they sell to the mounted shooters and movie people. The problem with these expensive cases which are made by Starline is that the loading procedure has been to use a star crimp to seal the cases. This makes them non-reloadable for any futher use.

I made the blanks used by the K-9 trainers when I was a Firearms Instructor and Armorer for the Baton Rouge City Police and EBR Sheriffs Office. Those were easy to make and use for the training of the dogs. We also used these same blanks for our shoot don't shoot training and other police work needs.
I decided to see if I could make some good blanks with the 5-1 brass cases to where they could be used for many loadings.
I came up with loading 32 grains of 2 F powder into the case and then inserting a .430 wad over the powder and seating it with a compression die. I then ran the 5-1 case which is much longer into the crimping die for the 44wcf. This tapered the case down to where the powder load is sealed and stays in place. It produces a huge boom and plenty of smoke for those who need to see the smoke. The cases appear to be able to go through many loadings with no problems. Take Care David

[bruce drake]

Pull out your favorite 38 Special revolver and use these blanks
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/354...lank-box-of-50
at about 80 cents a piece or simply load the 38 special cases with 3 gr of Unique and a couple of cardboard wads and a good roll crimp.

My track coach used his M&P Model 10 revolver for many years. but that was many years ago before bringing a handgun on school property would put you in jail for 10 years.

[doc1876]

I 2nd the cap & ball. Safe, cheap, easy.

[Nickel City Dude]

Pull out your favorite 38 Special revolver and use these blanks
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/354...lank-box-of-50
at about 80 cents a piece or simply load the 38 special cases with 3 gr of Unique and a couple of cardboard wads and a good roll crimp.

My track coach used his M&P Model 10 revolver for many years. but that was many years ago before bringing a handgun on school property would put you in jail for 10 years.

The problem with smokeless blanks is that they do not have enough smoke. The track & field referees around here need the smoke of black powder. The way they explained it to me is that the starter stands at one end of the track with the gun and the timer stands at the other with the watch. When the gun goes off the man with the watch stats the watch by the smoke from the gun not the bang because it take the noise longer to reach the starter than the sight of the smoke. That is why I make my blanks with black powder.

[garandsrus]

That doesn't seem fair to the runners, unless they start on the smoke also.

[Nickel City Dude]

That doesn't seem fair to the runners, unless they start on the smoke also.

I must not have explained myself well enough. The runners are at the start of the track with the starter that has the gun so they here the shot when the starter gun is fired. The timer is at the end of the track with the watch and starts the watch when he sees the smoke.

[trackinfo]

There are two situations for a starter. If "automatic timing" is being used, you need a loud enough "report" to set off the timer. Most any .32 will do. Of course, it there is a large, noisy crowd, you also need to be loud enough to be heard against that din. The situation that requires visual is when manual timing is being done. Someone holding a stopwatch needs to see the smoke possibly from 150 yards away. To get a guaranteed cloud of, well not exactly smoke but something dark and visible--I'll credit an old starter named Bob Baker for telling me about this; on top of your powder, even on top of the wad, put some orange plumber's chalk. That cloud of chalk is visible against almost any sky background where white smoke would get lost. It'll make a mess of your gun, but you have to clean it anyhow so this is just another layer with the regular soot.

[wills]

What about 22 nail gun blanks, Vaseline in the cylinder.

[0802]

I did some of these this year for a local starter. Used brass from blanks he had already shot.

I used 2.7 gr of Pyrodex RS / FFg. I 3D printed a overshot (overpowder) card and dropped it in. Sealed with hot glue gun.

He seemed happy with them.

I did also 3D print a dipper for them as none of my Lee dippers were the right volume. Actually printed a whole set, the rest of which I doubt I will ever use.

Hope this is use ful.