.38-50 Hepburn

[ian45662]

Anyone been shooting any 38-50 lately? Could someone walk me through the process of forming brass. I have some more Remington brass on the way but don’t have access to the conversion die. Is it 14 grains of unique then fill the rest of the case with cream of wheat?

[Don McDowell]

Probably about half that amount of unique or less, cream of wheat, old coffee grounds, rice.... pug the case mouth by sticking it in a piece of canning wax.

[beltfed]

agree with Don,
I just fire formed more of my 38-50 brass. Used "any old primers, 7 grains of Bullseye, fill snugly with Corn Meal
plugged case with Emmerts lube.
I fire the brass with muzzle vertical. Why? I don't know. Imagine the cases will form more uniformly circumferentially
????
Next comes unifoming the brass neck thickness by Outside Neck turning just enough to cut down to the thinnest part of the
fire formed brass
beltfed/arnie

[beltfed]

Oh,
When fire forming the 30-40 brass, there will be a curl on the case mouths since the brass is too long for the chamber.
So, you need to trim slightly, just enough to remove the curl. Good to know the overall length of your chamber from the front of rim
to case stop. Best to do a chamber cast and measure. You don't want to trim back too far.
The next firing should then give you decent practice loads, and will finish forming out the necks before you want to do the outside
neck trimming. Some people do not do the outside neck trim until at least the third firing with full loads.
beltfed/arnie

[ian45662]

Arnie what neck turning tool do you use?

[Kurt]

Ian,

I just got home from Dingman's Ferry PA picking up my second .38-50. This is a CPA and it has a tighter chamber than the DZ .38-50 Hep so I will be forming more brass for this chamber with a different head stamp. I have Winchester and Captech .30-40 Krag brass.

Ian when I formed the first 500 cases for the Hep I used some old primers left over from the 80's at $6.83 a 1000 and some Russian primers just to lite the powder.
I used 11 gr and some 12 HP38 and filled the rest of the case with COW and plugged the case mouth with bullet lube. 1/4" or so and sat on a bucket in the garage and fired 25 or 30 rounds and gave the barrel some time to cool and fired 25 more again.
Before firing the brass I annealed them down about 1/2 way on the case to get full expansion and they looked like what you see with the ring before trimming them and after trimming in the pictures.
After forming the brass I cleaned them in the tumbler and trimmed them longer than the chamber, right at the transition of the throat. If you expand the photo you can see where I trimmed for the second full load of black for the final forming. I left the case a little longer than the chamber by taking inside curl out so I could seat a PP bullet for the second shot. This made the case long enough to get a proper trim length for my chamber.

With the unfired .30-40 Krag cases they would not chamber in my chamber. First I thought it was the base causing the tightness but using a marking felt pen I marked the whole case to see where the tight spot was and it ended up at the shoulder. Well I could not find any dies for this caliber so I ordered a $14. Lee 30-40 sizing die and cut the neck down on the lathe and made a neck sizing die that took the shoulder down. Worked out great.
With this new CPA I will form more brass with a different head stamp for this rifle I will go through the same proses again.

This CPA I had them build it so it weighs out at under 10# with a XX Douglas 1/2 round barrel. It holds very well on a spot on the wall.
I ordered it with the wood unfinished so it will be a while before I put a round through it. Maybe

Kurt

I use a Wilson trimmer

[ian45662]

Good to hear from you Kurt. I have not seen you post for a while. Yours sounds like my wife’s rifle. Hers has one of those mercury reducers in so it weighs just a tad more than 10 pounds but recoil is mild. Very mild. I shot mine with some 3F a few days ago and accuracy was very good on turkeys. I might try a ladder load with it this weekend and see what 3F load it might like the best. I never thought of fire forming in the garage. I might try that.

[Kurt]

Hi Ian,

Well when people call you an Idiot by stating an opinion it's time to shut it down.

I found the 3F Swiss and OE shot very well but it tended to throw a shot out of ten and I have not shot it enough to find out if it was the long .110" freebore this Hep has or what is causing the problem. I was hoping to get some snow by now to look the bullets over for a clue what might be causing this.
The 1.5 or 2F Swiss has been pretty consistent, the 2F OE has shot several 10 shots down at the 200 yard line under 2" during a bright sun on the paper that helped me see the point of aim better.

I sure got bit by this little caliber. I just had to have another in my collection especially for my young Grand Daughters to shoot with me. They live an hour from Friendship and I will get a membership to shoot the matches there this season. It's only a 5-1/2 hrs trip to their house from here. I would like to see them learn to use and load my rifles so my rifles get used and stay in the family when I retire.

[ian45662]

You don’t have to be a member to shoot the silhouette matches.

[beltfed]

Ian,
I am using my lyman Universal trimmer with a Lyman Outside Neck Turning attachment. Works fine,
BUT, they discontinued the attachment and now I have to get a friend to make pilots for it. They are different and longer
than the usual trimmer pilots.