Adventures in Case Resizing

I learned a couple of important lessons last night:

• Just because it worked once, doesn't mean it will work twice.
  
• A hammer is a handy tool to have on the reloading bench.

I was taking my first run at reforming some 7mm Remington Magnum brass to 7 x 61 Sharpe and Hart. I doused the first case with lubricant and slowly ran it through the sizing die. It worked beautifully. So I tried to do it again. This time I managed to get the case to bind so strongly that I ripped the rim off attempting to extract it. Once I ran out of rim, I got a bit frustrated and grabbed a small hammer and a metal rod. After absolutely soaking the die and jammed case with WD-40 I removed the expander head and rod, placed my metal rod through the top of the die and into the case and started swinging. It took about five minutes, but eventually I forced it out.

Oh well. Live and learn I guess. I am still wonder why it worked so well the first time and then bound up so tightly the second.

Splitting cases seem to be an issue

One thing I am seeing a lot of is split cases. All of the brass I have is old (think 30-40 years old) and I am hoping that it has just grown brittle over time. Otherwise, this could very quickly become an expensive gun to load for. Of course, it is possible to reform 7mm Remington Magnum brass into Sharpe and Hart cases, but I'd rather not get into that if I don't have to.

Well, that was embarrassing

I shot about 40 rounds off of my elbow on a bench at 100 yards last Saturday. The best group I managed was about three inches. On the other hand, I did learn some useful things.

1. My gun seems to like hotter loads. The ones with 60 grains of 4350 behind a 160 grain bullet shot better than the ones with 54 grains behind the same bullet.

2. There wasn't an appreciable difference in recoil between the slower and hotter loads.

3. That being what it is, the gun still kicks more than enough to make me have some flinching issues.

Going forward, I plan to load some lighter rounds that I can shoot more comfortably in order to see if I can get my flinching under control.

Going shooting tomorrow

Well, so far, the gun seems capable of accurate shooting. A couple of weeks ago I loaded up some 160 grain Speer boat-tail soft points with 54 grains of IMR 4350. At 100 yards, accuracy was okay (around 2") but nothing to get thrilled about. Much better was a hotter load (also with 160 grain boat-tail soft points). The only trouble was that I don't really know what it was. It was some left-over ammunition that was included with the gun. For sake of experiment. I have loaded some significantly hotter cartridges (60 grains of IMR 4350 behind the 160 grain bullets). I hope to find out tomorrow if I get better accuracy from them.