My Approach To Making .45-75 From .348 Winchester

[Rancid Roy]

Howdy folks,

I lurked around here a bit and picked up some tips, thanks to everyone. Here's what I did to make .348 into .45-75.

Went to MidwayUSA and ordered the brass, RCBS .45-75 dies, shellholder [.348] and "Cowboy" or "Legacy" expanders in .357, .375, .401, .429....

The extra expanders all fit my expansion die in .45-75.

I trimmed the .348 case to 1.90 inches as explained here on this forum.

Ran the case into my sizer die.

Then expanded the case neck via the expanders mentioned above in sequential order ending with the .45-75 expander.

I then ran the case again into my sizing die to "iron" it out.

I have done only one case but it worked without any annealling or splitting. I will do more cases but I think it will work.

Check out the prices at Midway on the "Legacy" .45-75 dies and the expanders. It was about $60.00 total not counting the .348 shellholder. Maybe a total of $70.00?

I hope to fireform the brass with black powder and probably 250 grain .45 Colt bullets. Then I'll load the various bullets I found on Midway [Goex 350 grain] and the ones coming from Buffalo Arms [three different ones] with black powder.

Hopefully I'll find a good load.

I wish to thank everyone here for their input into this forum and especially Grizzly Adams for his "monitorship" of this forum. I have learned a lot that would have been a lot of time spent searching out the necessaries. Many thanks.

ADDENTA My brass re-modeling became the reloading project from Hades today [11-02-08/Sunday]. I have never annealed brass before and found out that I had to in order to do this project. Cold-forming with my set of dies was a 50% loss rate. So I bought a small propane torch kit and googled the web for annealing info. After having another 50% loss rate on forming what I thought was properly annealed brass I finally figured out to anneal better and did better. BUT....it took 3 hours or more to just cobble up only 19 cases!! All's well that ends well someone once said and now I have 100 .348/.45-75 cases loaded with Goex Cartridge and .45 Long Colt 250 grain bullets for fire-forming. I hope there are no more surprises!!

MORE ADDENTA Today [11-09-08/Sunday] I went to the range and shot all 100 rounds I had loaded. I think I heard somewhere that shooting BP in a lever gun was no harder to clean than a single shot. Not so today. But it may be because the cases were not expanding fully to seal the chamber. They have the "coke-bottle" appearance mentioned in the forum. I'm sure they'll "iron out" in time. And then hopefully they'll seal better. I would shoot 10 rounds with 4 "puffs" between each shot to keep the fouling soft. Then I cleaned the barrel to almost completely clean. Then 10 more rounds. It was a bit arduous since I was also shooting a Shiloh Sharps with BP for accuracy loads. The 1876 was just shot into the berm not at targets. I cleaned the 1876 at the range and again when I came home. Lots of crud in the action, mostly in the carrier and block area. THEN I had to clean 100 .45-75 and 26 .45-70 cases!!!! I'm glad I don't have a .45-70 Gatling Gun that I am shooting BP loads in!!!

BUT, I ain't really complaining. I GOT TO SHOOT MY 1876!!!;D

[Grizzly Adams]

Good information, Rancid!   Sit and visit a spell, Amigo.