[Dean2]

Some brass is far easier to find, and thus a lot cheaper, than others. For some reason, as of late 7x57 has become scarce, and the price of new brass has really shot up. I thought some others might benefit from knowing that 7x57 brass is really easy to make and there are a number of choices.

There still seems to be a lot of boxer primed surplus 8x57 around, that one you can simply neck down, as you can with 9 and 9.3x57. If you can't easily find any of that, the good old 270 makes a perfect substitute. I bought 100 once fired matching Remington for $30 at the Shootist, vs $90 for 100 7x57 Privi plus shipping from Tradex. I actually had enough matching 30-06 brass to do the job but my buddy shoots an 06 so I save the brass for him. With the 270 brass, I don't own one and neither does anyone I hunt regularly with.

Take your 270 brass and using a Dremel cutoff wheel or similar, cut off the neck just about at the neck shoulder junction. You want to leave about one to two widths of the cutoff wheel on there so it is easy to square up with your case trimmer. Clean up the cut with a champhering tool.

Apply a light coat of Imperial wax to the body, and neck. Run this into your seating die, with the seater removed and the die one turn from bottoming out so you don't put a crimp on the brass. Once you have done the full batch, take and lightly lube or graphite the INSIDE of the short neck. You could skip this step but it makes better brass and far easier than using only the FL die.

Now run these through your FL sizing die with the decapping rod in place. Make sure the FL die is adjusted all the way down so that it is caming on the up stroke i.e. 1/8 turn past touching the shell holder with the ram all the way up.

This should give you finished brass that is about 2.238 long, trim to 2.225 and try in your gun. It should feed and close perfectly smooth. If it binds a hair, turn your FL die down another 1/16th at a time till you get a perfect feed. Do the rest of the batch now that you have the FL die set perfectly. (Remeber, once the ammo is fire formed you will want to neck size or back the FL die way off, at least 1 1/2 turns from touching shell holder, so you aren't over sizing your nicely tailored to chamber brass.)

The same methods will work with 30-06 brass except 30-06 brass is only 2.494 long, vs 270 at 2.590. The 1/10 isn't much but it means you will want to leave a little more neck on the 30-06 when you are trimming it with the Dremel so that your 7x57 brass still have enough to clean up on the trimmer.

This method requires no special dies or equipment, just what you already have on hand. The method works an a great many other brass reforming operations, 221FB or 223 brass to 221 FB and then to to 20 Vartarg, 17 FB or 17 MKIV, 22 Hornet to 17 HH, as couple of examples. Hope this is helpful and that others will post easy conversions for cheap brass to replace expensive or hard to get brass.