38-55Win brass

[Mad Mucus]

Good morning/evening pards,

Seems I have purchased another shooter, a Winchester Legendary Frontiersman 38-55 with dies.

Time to start focussing on gathering the reloading stuff and info required to load this unfamiliar to me cartridge.
When DD receives his new shipment of molds I hope to get a DD38-55-255 from him, so that covers the boolit side of things. Got a stash of Federal LR primers, ffg & fffg, brass being the only other component I need.
From all I have read, Starline 38-55Win seems best for the '94 chambering, over Winchester and 30-30 fireformed(all available locally). Am I right? Please share your wisdom.

MM

[pony express]

Unless there is a very large price difference, I'd just use the properly headstamped Starline brass. I might use the 30-30 if I already had a bunch, though.

[Dick Dastardly]

Howdy Mark, and Merry Christmas!

You can measure your chamber by doing a chamber casting with cerosafe.  FWIW, the wood and metals I've won have been all done with 30-30 fire formed brass in my 38-55.  My gun is labeled the same as yours.  "Legendary Frontiersman".

Enjoy the smoke.

DD-DLoS

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

I mostly use reformed cases.  I do separate them BY WEIGHT, as weight is a close indicator of uniform internal capacity.  Case wall thickness is another variable but unless I can detect a difference when case neck expanding I ignore it.  If I was doing Schuetzen competition I would dig out my stash of W-W cases.

[Mad Mucus]

Starline is a tad over a buck each..... think I'll go that way, see if I can scrounge some 30-30 too.

Happy Xmas to you & yours.

[Pettifogger]

I've always used Winchester brass.  After all, it IS the .38-55 WINCHESTER.

[Mad Mucus]

Starline is supposed to be thinner walled?

[Pettifogger]

After buying many thousands of pieces of brass in a variety of calibers as a general rule of thumb I have found that Winchester brass is usually the thinnest, closely followed by Starline.  Remington brass is almost always the thickest, especially in the "old" calibers like the .32-20, .38-40, 44-40 etc.

[Marshal Deadwood]

If you shoot a .429 or .430 bullet, would the added thickness of the Remington brass cause you probs in chambering your 44-40 rounds ? So far, I've only used Starline in 44-40. They 'say' that their 44-40 brass is 'stiffer' than the others,,,,,not sure of it myself, just sayin' what they say.

Deadwood

[Pettifogger]

If you shoot a .429 or .430 bullet, would the added thickness of the Remington brass cause you probs in chambering your 44-40 rounds ? So far, I've only used Starline in 44-40. They 'say' that their 44-40 brass is 'stiffer' than the others,,,,,not sure of it myself, just sayin' what they say.

Deadwood

Depends on the gun.  The Italians have standardized on .429 barrels and will usually fire rounds with .429 - .430 bullets with no problem.  My Colts, including Lightning rifles, need .427 bullets and thin brass or they won't chamber.

[Dakota Widowmaker]

Here is the problem I have seen first hand.

38-55 brass from Winchester tends to be a bit on the short side. 2.05" is what I regularly measure when I last bought.

This causes a problem where the bullet has to jump quite a distance to get from the cartridge mouth to the bore.

The only way I could solve this is with a custom mold from MountainMolds that added an extra .075" to the nose length.

Buffalo Arms and Starline now make brass that is 2.125" long, which should solve the problem.

The thing is, you won't know until you get a chamber cast made. This is how I found out what I needed... Then I slugged the bore and found I too needed a bit more on my bullet diameter.


I am very curious what the length of the fire formed shells are when starting with 30-30. Is it 2.08-2.10" or is it still right around 2.025"

I did find that annealing even my Winchester brass made a difference with sealing the chamber.

The most powder I have ever gotten in a 38-55 was around 48gr of FFFg GOEX Express, and it had quite a bit of bark to it. That was a compressed load with NO lube cookie and a thin .030" over powder card.

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

My Hi-wall was rebored from a sewer piped .32-40 by Ron Smith in Alberta.  The bore os .376, gain twist.  Old W-W brass, at 2.125", fits the chamber but great ammo can be made from .30-30 cases.

The best way to reform them is by fire forming.  I used 15 gr of Bullseye with the case topped up with wadded paper towel.  When I do that the cases end up 2.03" long.  I use the Lyman gascheck mould made for .375 H&H mag, but without the gascheck.  I don't crimp so altering the mould never crossed my mind, nor seemed required.

[Mad Mucus]

Howdy Mark, and Merry Christmas!

You can measure your chamber by doing a chamber casting with cerosafe.  FWIW, the wood and metals I've won have been all done with 30-30 fire formed brass in my 38-55.  My gun is labeled the same as yours.  "Legendary Frontiersman".

Enjoy the smoke.

DD-DLoS

DD,

Just out of interest, what is your cartridge OAL? With the DD 38-55-255, do you crimp(light or heavy) on the crimp groove or set the boolit out to contact the lands?

[Dick Dastardly]

Howdy MM,

I've had good luck with crimping in the crimp grove on the DD 38-55 bullets.  I use a light crimp.  Enough to make the ammo "pocket safe" for carrying loose.  My Legendary Frontiersman just doesn't seem at all fussy about OAL, as long as they work well in the action.  Since I do fill the magazine, I do want the bullets staying put till I pull the trigger.  Stoking that magazine does help when shooting long distance side matches on the clock.

DD-DLoS

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

After a Pard PM'd me for an expanded explantion of my reforming process, I drafted this;

Most of my .30-30 cases are free range pick-ups.  I make them roughly round and deprime and tumble. Make sure they will chamber. Reprime, Drop in 15 grains of Bullseye, firmly ram in paper towel to fill up the case.  Off to the range and load & fire into the air.  The cases are almost fireformed but might need to have a touch of inside neck sizing if the blowing out process is not quite complete.  I have found that any less than 15 gr. doesn't quite complete the job, but more is a waste, and maybe more pressure than enough.  After the case neck looks like it should for a .38-55, give it a light case-trim.  If the case was uneven to start with it might leave "wonky" case mouths, but usually close enough that a light trim evens it out.  Finally, weigh and sort so you end up with a lot of cases with similar weight, and similar neck tension.

The alternative process is to use a C-H tapered case expander, but this leaves the cases a bit shorter by a couple of "thou".

Go to ch4d.com. navigate to products, reloading dies, to "M" type tapered expander'

"M' Type Tapered Expander Plug

These plugs are used for expanding the case neck while case forming. Available in any diameter. Price is for 9/16-18 top thread only. For larger sizes prices are the same as "M" Type expander plugs.

The "XXX" in the part numbers below should be replaced by the diameter of the plug that you desire.

Part # Description Price

TMPXXXXXX ?M? Type Tapered Expander Plug $ 14.93  

I see that ch4d is a supplier of Imperial Die Wax, my favorite!

Like all new tricks, try a handful first rather than work on a bunch while you work out a smooth technique.