.17 Hornet Brass - ' in between die'

treetop

Well-Known Member
Hi,
i have spoke to a guy about making an 'In-between die '
to assist in making 17 hornet brass from the .22 hornet,
the idea being to neck down to .200 cal 1st

i have been quoted £ 40 - £ 30 to make the dies
obviously the more made the cheaper the cost ,

so, would anyone be interested ?

Cheers
al.
 
And by the time Ive done that , & paid for the die,
i could have saved my money & had one made !

You ou can't go straight in with the 17 case forming die, you could try to use the seating die 1st, but I wouldn't choose either way, why risk a set of expensive dies ?!?!? It doesn't take much to damage the inside of one
 
Does this technique require fire forming as the last stage? Is the fireforming shot still a 'good' consistant ie usable shot?
 
The technique is simple, but has a few tricky stages..

take .22 hornet brass, then reduce neck to .20 cal ,
next full lenght size, then trim to 1.355"
anneal the shoulder & fireform...
Then full lenght size again & trim to correct lenght.

aparently the accuracy is good in the cases when fireforming, as long as you have a good load that shows no pressure signs ( in standard cases ).

the reason you must use a tween die, is that the 17 hornet is much shorter than the .22 hornet
 
I used to size annealed 357 cases to 25 caliber in one pass. I know you're dying to make this complicated but you might just be able to resize annealed 22 Hornet. ~Muir
 
Those cases surely weren't annealed first? I checked with some friends. The just size Hornet after annealing. They say they lose one now and again, but that is part of the game when dealing with such thin brass.~Muir
 
You guys have got a lot more time and patience than me even if you've got a stack of free 22 brass. The way I worked it out when I bought my Hornet was that I would buy a few hundred factory rounds and reload that brass which is designed for the job. (I believe the failure rate on 22 brass is quite high).
Right so 17 factory lets say costs about 70p a pop , deduct what your reloading would have cost you lets say 30-40p and that means that brass has cost you about 30 - 40p without any of the ball aching faff being discussed. After owning the gun about 2 weeks I had about 200 brass to get on with working up a load, 180 rabbits in the dealer and still some factory ammo to keep going with.

The cost of the die alone is 100+ cases and you've still got all the work on top.

Just my thoughts
 
Ok...

17 Hornady hornet brass £ 35 for 50 , therefore £ 70 per 100
22 hornet Privi brass. £ 21 per 100

shop bought ammo :- £ 25 for 25 ( £ 1 per rnd )


A tween die - £ 30 ( lowest quoted cost )

powder - say £ 45 tub , = 7000 gr @ roughly 10gr per rnd = 6.5p each rnd

bullet heads - say £ 21 per 100 = 21 per rnd

primers £4 per 100 = 4p per rnd


Therefore :-
100 shop bought factory rnds = £ 100
100 made brass rnds = £ 82.50 ( minus the tween die = £ 52.50 )

200 shop bought factory rnds = £ 200
200 made brass rnds. = £ 135.50 ( minus the tween die £ 105.50 )

Now, is that a great saving ???!?!?!?


There are 2 options that work really well, to start the neck off, giving great results time & time again:-

1 - a tween die to reduce the neck to .20 & get the start of the shoulder in the correct place
2 - some use the seating die to start the neck, can't be done in all seating dies though.

There are 6 steps to making the brass ( that work & produce great results ) :-

take .22 hornet brass & Neck down to .20
Then, run through the 17 hornet full lenght die
cut to 1.355
anneal shoulder & neck
fireform
trim to correct size 1.345 - 1.350 ( both work fine ).


22 hornet privi brass has the same wall thickness of the factory Hornady,
it also has a larger flash hole, & a larger capacity after fireforming, 13.85gr as opposed to 13.4 gr


Muir, I don't doubt what you have said, but there is a wealth of info on this , & all the issues that ppl have had trying to make the brass...
I offer only my own experience & information that has come from a group of 17 hornet & small cal shooters that have done a lot more in depth testing than me ... See here :- Saubier.com ( a sticky in the small cal reloading section in discussions board )

Yes, those cases were annealed before sizing...
You can't stick a 22 hornet brass in the 17 hornet die... Without a lot of loss or damage,
as the shoulders & cases lenght are very different.

cheers
al.
 
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I'm with George on this one. I bought 200 factory rounds plus 200 new cases, a set of dies and reckon it will probably be a decade before I need to buy any more brass or worry about highly complex case sizing processes that look time consuming, complex and the sort of thing I would make a pigs ear of!

Reloading for .17 Hornet is fiddly enough!
 
And by the time Ive done that , & paid for the die,
i could have saved my money & had one made !

You ou can't go straight in with the 17 case forming die, you could try to use the seating die 1st, but I wouldn't choose either way, why risk a set of expensive dies ?!?!? It doesn't take much to damage the inside of one

I'm intrigued to know how using the seating die to neck down the brass could damage the die?
I was planning to use my Redding seating die to do exactly that. The Redding seater and full length two die set is only about £50, so quite useful if it could perform the step down too.
 
You can't use the Hornady die ,
which is the one I have & refered to ..

It has the telescopic inner to seat the head
 
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