Up until now I have be a bit of a brass snob and only used Lapua. Then I decided to make a zombie gun and practice some plinking for those zombies. And just in case the doomsday ever comes I wanted to be well stocked.
I had a bit of a look out for once fired brass after Bladeracer seemed to have got a good deal. I was looking around and in general it wasnt that much cheaper than the ADI stuff. So I sat it out for a while then checked out the price of some Buffalo River Factories loaded with Sierra Gamekings or Sierra Blitzkings. They were about a $1 a piece and if you bought the 900 you got the ammo crate and a bit more of a discount. So I went home and did the numbers of buying the new ADI Brass, powder,primer and projectiles. I couldn't make them for that much or it was only cents in it. So I went and got 250 of each and thought well I can put my own projectiles in them once fired. Then I saw a deal of 500 Sako shell offered on FacePalm. I jumped on them as things seemed to be selling fast. Anyway I got them delivered and home. Ohh boy
They were once fired alright but from the us and in a Semi at least a lot of the necks were badly bent and nearly every case had extraction dint's in them.
I gave them all a measure and thought ok a FLS and a trim and we will see how we go. Then a tumble to get them shiny.
So at this point I had FLS and trimmed 500 and tumbled them all. I thought I better check them to see ho they cycle through the gun and they were pretty tight. I mean in some cases it was hard to push the bolt in and then it was hard to very stiff to close.
Bugger I thought I better do some measurements on my once fired factory rounds and compare them with what I thought I had brought back to specs.
Turned out that the shoulder was still long at the datum point. I checked the setting of the die which all seemed good so I took a few thou off one of my shell holders. At this point I think I needed to take the shoulder back about 5 thou so that what came off the shell holder I tried one case and it was better but not great. I thought that to make this process easier that the brass could do with an anneal it didn't look like it had been done at the factory certainly no colour change like the ADI brass so it was 500 to be annealed. They also measured a little bit larger in the bottom part of the case. Having experienced this before and thinking of the chamber size of a semi auto I thought I need a small base die for this job. It will reform the sides and bump the shoulder back. So the all went through the process again a resize with the small base die which pushed the shoulder back nicely after the anneal which ad really changed the colour of the annealed section. another trim and another tumble. Leave to dry. Today I put the 500 into a box and had 20 container to weight batch sort them into. That turned out pretty well with just a few really light outliers and the rest divided up into lots of 50 by weight quite well.
There was a lot of work to turn that brass from once fired to bolt gun specs. I learn t that once fired is not always once fired. Dont jump on a deal. The chamber size of the Semi Auto can be and is made a lot larger than what we normally encounter in bolt guns. When you see that Field gauge spec in the go no go gauges that is where semi autos are