1911 problem

Winelover

North Central Arkansas
Have 30 round mags for the CZ Scorpion (comes with 20's) and a couple of the extended high capacity ones for my 10-22. Rarely do I load more than 15 in the Scorpion and can't remember when I last used them for the 10-22. They make the firearms cumbersome and are not shooting bench friendly. Marauding soda cans aren't a problem in my area.
 

Pistolero

Well-Known Member
Fiver,
I have been putting .22 LR brass in a box for a while, pick it up on the concrete pad when I am
plinking. Is it worth me mailing it to you, since you make bullets out of it? I don't think it is
worth driving down to the metal recycler place, and I have heard that he won't take brass after
having some live rounds mixed in with some.

I'd don;t have tons but a box about 8x8x8 cube 2/3 full or more. Seems like putting it into
a padded envelope would be cheap shipping, but may be $6 shipping for $0.05 worth of
brass.

Bill
 

JonB

Halcyon member
Fiver, when you respond to Bill, I'd be curious of you sort them 22LR by headstamp for jacket material?
I save range 22LR as well, but I recently shipped off a box to someone, so I only have a shotgun shell box of them right now.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
I get all the 22's I could ever use just by cleaning the bench top off when I'm at the range.
I don't hardly ever bother to bend over to pick them up.
maybe if I find some particularly large pile of them with very small firing pin dents or the like, other than that it's only clean bench top stuff.

Jon.
I do sort them by HS.
the alloy they use and the weight between brands varies some, enough I don't want to try to match up cores, and I would weight sort the finished product further,,, if they were cast bullets.

they ain't the only ones that way though.
40 S&W's also vary, but not just in weight, rem's seem to also be longer and have more case capacity than the others, Federal/CCI and Blazer are usually close-nuff, and Winchester seems to have the shortest and lightest cases.
occasionally I will run across a batch of federal cases that are closer to Winchester though.
 

JonB

Halcyon member
Fiver,
I just had to ask. Nearly every swager I've talked to that is making 224 from 22LR, DO NOT sort and just use mixed brass. I've never done the 224 swaging, but I have swaged the 9 to 40, as well as 40 to 44 (and experimented with 5.7 to 308 with some borrowed dies). Anyway, I found it crucial to the "feel" to use matching brass. So I would have thought the same with forming 22LR...thanks for confirming that. I tried many different case brands when swaging pistol projectiles and I found that WIN brand 9mm cases worked best for me, but they usually had a wide range of weight variation (about 6 gr IIRC), so I had to weigh sort them. Blazer's in 40 was the cat's meow for making 44 and bonus they nearly all fell into a ±1.5 grain range.

I have since sold all my swaging stuff, as I learned it wasn't worth the time for me...and I didn't enjoy the process as much as I enjoy casting.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
it is a lot of work, and equipment is needed.
it's hard on a press too.
the only way to really get good benefits is by going whole hog with the equipment.

the cheap dies etc. just don't have the quality and lead to a lot more effort, and you still end up with a so-so product at the end.

Brian's stuff really is about the best balance as far as price, quality, and bullets made.
if you have the feel for what's going on through the handle and aren't afraid to pick and poke at your own processes, and do some QC, they do some pretty darn good work.
probably never recoup the costs of the tools through bullet numbers,, but meh, never gonna have to buy 44's ever again either.