Anyone pulled apart an original .45-75 round?

[Oregon Bill]

Hey, I'm glad I'm not the only one who needs a 12-year-old to help me with confusers, cell phones, DVD players and such ...

[larryo_1]

                                                                                     



                                                                                       

[larryo_1]

To All:

By God I did it!  Now for the info on that photo.  the two cartridges are : an original and one of mine.  Mine is and the only one a Bertram case.  The bullet is my Hoch custom mold.  It was cast at 16:1 and weighs in at 350 grains.  You will notice the difference between the shape of the two cartridges.  That is because my rifle is an early Uberti with the larger chamber.  That gives me about an additional 5 grains or so of case capacity and I like it.  After all this foo-fer-raw, I was finally able to get this done.  Now I just hope that I can remember how to do it again!  After all I have to take pity on me as I am over 75 now and my brain, eyes, etc ain't working as well as they di a few years back.  Hope this helps you folks.  I think that it is worth the wait.

[dusty texian]

Mighty Fine Job Larryo-1.That pic. came out very good. First time I have seen the difference in case size ,of the large chamber. Did it take more than one time to fire- form the case. When I bought my 1876 Winchester 45-75 wcf , the dealer that had sold it to me had got it from an estate sale up in Maine. The old gun had been in this family since new , He had got what was left of the case of 1000 round's that was thought to had been purchased with the rifle. I did manage to get the reloading tool's for this rifle ,but he had sold the wooden box of cartridges. I sure wish I could have had a chance at buying the case of 45-75 wcf . They were old but I'll bet just as strong as could be. Have a Goodun Amigo ...Dusty

[Oregon Bill]

Nice job Larryo. That's a handsome slug, and it looks very much like Dusty's from his original mold. I was unaware of the large-chamber issue myself, but having five more grains' capacity is a blessing.

[larryo_1]

You wanted to know about my fire-forming those cases.  Well all  I did was saw off a little less than a quarter inch of the case and then put in about 15 or 16 grains of Bullseye and topped it off wilth a beeswax wad, step out the door of the shop and BANG!  I had a fire-formed case.  Then i ran it through the RCBS Trim and file die that i got for it, trimmed off a little more of the case and last of all the cases were annealed by the water method.  That is how i did it.  Now I got enough that I don't need to do that anymore.

[dusty texian]

A friend just gave me close to 60 ,348 wcf cases. I am going to neck them up and fire-form them to 45-75 wcf. I think this should make me some good cases. Will try your method. Thank's .....Dusty

[larryo_1]

That fire-forming took very little time. I just sawed off a little less than a quarter inch from the case mouth, put in about 15 or 16 grains of Bullseye topped off with a beeswax plug and stuck the rifle out of the door of the shop and BANG---I had me a fire-formed case.  Then to the RCBS Trim and File die and finished shortening the case.  Then I annealed the cases in the water and blowtorch method and now after dozens of reloadings they still look pretty damn good.

[larryo_1]

Dusty:

I know that I repeated myself here but when I started out on this project, I too used 348 cases.  I fire-formed all of them.  And the rest of the proceedure.  I have never lost one of them and have shot some pretty stiff loads using those cases.  My recommendation is to only fire-form them and not try to expand them any other way.  I never tried to expand them using any other method and this works for me.  Good luck.

[dusty texian]

Thank's for the advice. Will do........Dusty

[w44wcf]

Bill,
I have dissected a couple of original .45-70 rounds. Powder charges were right around 75 grs and had a polished appearance.

Bullet:
weight: 349 grs.
diameter: .454" **
length: .70"
meplat: .28"
grease grooves: 3

The Lyman 457192 is pretty much an identical replication.

I'll post a side by side pic in a day or two.


**That is not unusual since the soft lead alloy bullet tends to be reduced slighly by the rigidity of the case neck in the seating process.

See these threads:
http://www.cascity.com/forumhall/index.php/topic,17913.0.html

see 2nd to last post:
http://www.cascity.com/forumhall/index.php/topic,45312.0.html


w44wcf

[Oregon Bill]

w44wcf: Look forward to the photo!

[w44wcf]

The "original bullet" was pulled from a W.R.A. CO. .45-75 head stamped cartridge.



w44wcf

[Oregon Bill]

w44wcf: Any guess as to the lube in those grooves? I know there were many, many commercial formulas in use in the 1870s and 80s.

[w44wcf]

Bill,
The lube is all dried up so hard to tell.  Back in the day, Winchester suggested lubing with either Japan wax or tallow.  I would guess it is Japan wax.

w44wcf

[Oregon Bill]

w44wcf, you may very well be right. Be interesting to have a chemical analysis done, just for the sake of historical research.  That is one handsome boolit.

[Mike]

Just pulled a 45-75 Winchester round and it had 71.5 grains of powder no wad, powder looked very much like 1 1/2 Swiss but had about 10% powder dust with it.

Made a section display round out of it.