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Old 04-12-2018, 03:53 PM
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Dean2 Dean2 is online now
 
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Default How to make 7x57 Mauser Brass

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.

Last edited by Dean2; 04-12-2018 at 04:00 PM.
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Old 04-12-2018, 07:41 PM
David Henry David Henry is offline
 
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Good post, many more $$$$ saving options are out there to the budget minded hand loader. Who else can add to O.P. with other caliber and case conversions, and let us know how you did it. D.H.
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Old 04-12-2018, 10:26 PM
Johnny G1 Johnny G1 is offline
 
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I have done the same, 270 into 257, one pass through the 257 die with Imperial Sizing Wax and then trim to length, size down my Lake City 06 brass to 25-06 in 2 passes using same wax and fire form to 25-06 Mashburn.
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Old 04-13-2018, 09:03 AM
JamesB JamesB is offline
 
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Too bad you missed the close out at Wholesale here in Calgary. They had literally dozens of boxes of 7x57mm ammo left at the end and had it discounted 80% off. I don't even think they sold it all at that price.
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Old 04-13-2018, 09:58 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JamesB View Post
Too bad you missed the close out at Wholesale here in Calgary. They had literally dozens of boxes of 7x57mm ammo left at the end and had it discounted 80% off. I don't even think they sold it all at that price.
That would have been great. Neither of the Edmonton stores had any 7x57 for sale during the deep discount period.
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Old 04-13-2018, 11:42 AM
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tikka250 tikka250 is offline
 
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Thanks! That's awesome info. I was getting to the point where it was more cost effective to buy loaded ammo for the brass than to buy the brass itself. It also just so happens that I have a pile of un-used 270 kicking around
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Old 04-13-2018, 12:32 PM
double gun double gun is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by David Henry View Post
Good post, many more $$$$ saving options are out there to the budget minded hand loader. Who else can add to O.P. with other caliber and case conversions, and let us know how you did it. D.H.
I don’t want to hijack the op thread without his consent but I have one that I could add.
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Old 04-13-2018, 01:22 PM
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Dean2 Dean2 is online now
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by double gun View Post
I don’t want to hijack the op thread without his consent but I have one that I could add.
Absolutely add another. That is the whole hope wheñ I srarted the thread.
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Old 04-13-2018, 01:31 PM
David Henry David Henry is offline
 
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An old friend who had no luck finding 40-70 Sharps cases would take the bottom half of a 30-40 Krag and soft solder the front half of a 30-30 Winchester case to it, then run it through his die and trim to length. All low pressure stuff, and it worked without separation after several firings. David.
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Old 04-13-2018, 02:26 PM
Mhunter51 Mhunter51 is offline
 
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6mm remington ( or 244 ) would also work and no trimming and cutting back. Same case, just the neck different.
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Old 04-13-2018, 02:55 PM
double gun double gun is offline
 
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This isn’t really anything new, just a different technique for making 350 brass.
I read about forming 350rm brass from any magnum brass. The problem is the store bought “case forming die” does the sizing in one step resulting in a fairly high failure rate. So I had an idea for a forming die.... I made a die that takes replaceable shoulder/neck inserts incrementally tighter. I made 4 inserts to really ease the process. I have not lost a case using this setup.

This is 300wm and a 375 H&h range picked up brass...




Next issue was hacksawing necks off became a pain so I built a crude cutoff saw that’s fast and fail safe.
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Old 09-04-2018, 02:01 PM
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Real good addition. Any others?
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Old 09-04-2018, 03:20 PM
Echo-Gecko Echo-Gecko is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JamesB View Post
Too bad you missed the close out at Wholesale here in Calgary. They had literally dozens of boxes of 7x57mm ammo left at the end and had it discounted 80% off. I don't even think they sold it all at that price.
I bought them all
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Old 09-05-2018, 08:38 AM
andy1 andy1 is offline
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Be careful with wrong head stamps scarey things can happen. Safety first even if it costs a few $$$ extra. Be careful out there.
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