shooting the 56-46

[Jack Wagon]

John,  That sounds like a very ambitious and interesting project. Looking forward to the results. Jump on in !   Jw

[treebeard]

Looking forward to your posts on this project. Also like to hear how you reprime the rimfire cases.

[injun john]

Hey Treebeard,
I'm using Prime-All priming compound available online.  I got the kit offered by the same company to reload 22 RF as practice and have found that the method works well on all of the rim fire ammo that I've tried it on.  I've got successful and dependable ignition on every round of .22, .32, .38 and .41  that I've loaded so far.  
It isn't rocket science but it's not a practical way to produce ammo since loading each round is sort of labor intensive but up scaling the inside the rim scraping tool and the priming packing tool was simple enough.
Even came up with a method to take the dent out of the fired rim so that you don't have to worry about getting the same area under the firing pin the next time. That way you will have priming compound under the complete rim.  
On the down side, copper has to be brought to cherry in order to soften it. So you are stuck with coal or MAP gas in order to get it there before quenching. But until I stumble into a way to manufacturer new rim fire cases in brass that is all I have.
The good part of cherring the case is that it carbonizes the ignition fouling and makes removing it pretty easy.
I'm looking at ways to spin pack the ignition compound but I still think that it will need a bit of hand packing afterward just to be sure that it is distributed completely.
Right now it takes me about half the day to cast 100 bullets, size them and load the 100 rnds of rim fire in any caliber  I've tried so I don't see this replacing my center fire ammo.  My intent is mostly just to test the ammo and compare it to the available published data.  
That and of course shooting my old Spencer Sporting Rifle, maybe even taking a deer or two next season with the ammo that it was intended to use. That would be just too cool.  

[treebeard]

Thanks Injun John for the information. Those reloaded rimfire opens up not only Spencer's but also Henry's and 1866's to being shot with ammo originally meant for them. Of course  the value of Henry's might give an owner pause before chancing actually shooting live ammo in one.

[injun john]

We are on our way.
Disassembled some of the 56-50 original ammo today. 
Removed the old priming compound and replaced it with the same volume of fresh.  Then reformed the case to 56-46 and once the acetone I used to make the compound sticky and safe to compress into the rim dries over night I will trim the case to the correct length.
Then I can reload it with powder, seat the bullet and then crimp the bullet to keep it in place.
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