284 to 450B cases AKA 450B LRP cases

[sappersmurf]

Halfslow

I purchased that same cut off saw for cutting 284s down. I found some cut off discs for it on ebay. 10 for $2.00 I believe. It works great.

[2zero6]

BD1:
I like that chop saw setup.

I had a fine tooth bow saw that I used to cut cases in the distant past. It wandered off one day.

I saw this post this morning before going to Harbor Freight, and spotted a tool I had to get; it is a small chop saw with a 2 inch metal cutting blade. Cost is $20 on sale.
Here is the link:

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/D ... mber=42307

The little vise thing is removable, so one could make one of your mahogany case holders and get to work.

Thanks for a great idea.
This will save me a lot of time.

I am gonna have to grab one tommorrow at the harborfreight down the street. A steal for $20 and I can use it for fabricating small car parts.

[wyoske]

I bought 1000 284 cases, screwed around trying this and that, nothing worked, and then bought the 45-70 die. Worked like a charm, except we're having a near blizzard and Im out shooting a 450.

[gunnut]

I was reading about case anealing and why, when it occured to me when we cut down a 284 case we are cutting off most if not all of the annealed brass!! I think anealing the case mouth of the cut down 284 winchester case will improve neck tension and extend brass life and help with the bullet jump problem. I think we have over looked a very important step in reloading.

[wildcatter]

I was reading about case anealing and why, when it occured to me when we cut down a 284 case we are cutting off most if not all of the annealed brass!! I think anealing the case mouth of the cut down 284 winchester case will improve neck tension and extend brass life and help with the bullet jump problem. I think we have over looked a very important step in reloading.

I concur. Gunny and I talked about this, this morning, and I think he may be on to something..

..t

[Hoot]

I anneal in other calibers and my experience has been that annealing reduces springback in the brass, which leads my reloads to have less neck tension, albeit more consistent from one the the next. In those reloads, I did not apply any additional crimp though, relying solely upon neck springback. I would suspect that if you're applying an additional crimp, the softer brass would crimp easier, so perhaps that's the reason it works better, eh?

Hoot

[BD1]

To my knowledge no other straight walled cases are annealed, why would we need to anneal .450B? The case mouth, expansion and standard crimp are nearly identical to what occurs with .45 acp brass. My .45 acp brass easily goes 50 reloads or so before I see a split neck. Most .450B brass is too short long before that, and if you load jacketed bullets using, the body type of crimp, there is no real stress on the case mouth anyway. I do anneal my .223 brass every five or six loadings, after I anneal it I consider the next loading a throw away as the neck tension is not consistent until it's been fired again at least once.
BD

[wildcatter]

To my knowledge no other straight walled cases are annealed, why would we need to anneal .450B? The case mouth, expansion and standard crimp are nearly identical to what occurs with .45 acp brass. My .45 acp brass easily goes 50 reloads or so before I see a split neck. Most .450B brass is too short long before that, and if you load jacketed bullets using, the body type of crimp, there is no real stress on the case mouth anyway. I do anneal my .223 brass every five or six loadings, after I anneal it I consider the next loading a throw away as the neck tension is not consistent until it's been fired again at least once.
BD

Two things, BD.

The 45 acp is a really low pressured rig, not really needing annealing. And two, you couldn't really anneal that case for fear of softening the base, which is a bad thing.

I've discarded 450b's for cracks and wear and do so much less, if I do anneal. I guess, what we need is for somebody to sacrifice say five or ten, new cases and shoot them, until a failure occurs. Then from the same lot of new brass, do the same thing, with the same load receipt, and anneal every other loading and compare results..

..t

[gunnut]

I don’t think we are talking about the same thing. The 284 Winchester is the parent case of the 450 Bushmaster and can be cut to the 450B outside dim... But, It is a 60Kpsi rifle case with larger primer (should help in lighting slower powders) and much thicker brass with an inside tapper. Cutting them down goes back to the old “Calgun” days when we were still figuring out what to feed this beast and brass and primers were in short supply. We tried inside reaming to get a better crimp which helped some. Then in rode The “WildCatter” and said “here! Try this pilgrim.
Lo and behold! The LaGentry side crimp die! A modified Lee 45-70 Factory crimp die. This allowed us to put a heavy crimp on the side of the case about anywhere you would want! Bullet jump problem solved!!
We have a solution for the problem. But, I don’t think we addressed the real problem of brass spring back. We were cutting the 284 case back to the point that the factory intentionally left work hardened. Annealing just the case mouth should solve the problem and allow us to use a standard tapper crimp on the 284 case. And I don’t think we will see the 60,000. PSI case changing much with the loads I’m seeing here. (Getting longer or shorter) A properly annealed 284 case should last until you lose it in the grass.

[BD1]

My original lot of Hornady factory cases have been loaded and fired twenty times. No split necks. However, only 20 or so are still at least 1.680, shorter than that and my side crimps are inconsistent. I have been treating my cut down .284 cases just like I treat .45 acp cases, no sorting, no triming, no worries. I shoot them and throw them in a bucket, when the bucket has a 100 in it I wash them and reload them. I have about 400 cut down .284 cases, so none of them have been fired very many times. No cracked necks, but I've retired a few for loose primer pockets. The first 100 I made were used brass, including some .284x6.5s which may account for the loose primer pockets.
If you guys feel the need to anneal, go right ahead. But I'm happy keeping it simple.
BD