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Yes I do have too much time on my hands but if you could help anyway I would appreciate it...
I bought some of the aluminum A-zoom snap caps and my 1911 is chewing up the rim and they are expensive so I want to make my own. I'm going to mark the case and notch the bullet so they will be easily identifiable. What I don't know how to do is stuff the primer pocket. The A-zoom's have a clear hard rubber material in the primer pocket but I don't know what it's made of. I was thinking of using some heat melt glue but that might be too soft. It needs to provide sufficient resistance and also be durable.
I've heard that you can make them with pencil erasers. Slice the eraser off the pencil with a razor blade at the appropriate depth and then stick them in. Well, went out to try it and the diameter of the eraser is a bit to big. You could probably get three slices off of the eraser if you could find one at the right diameter.
Good idea. I'm sure I can figure out how to cut out small round chunks out of an eraser.
I tried the hot melt and as expected it was too soft.
Then I found some epoxy and filled a hole but it will take until tomorrow to know if it works.
in the meantime off to find an eraser!
If you use these dummies very often, you'll put a lot of stress on the extractor, because of the heavy bullet. You could use some wooden dowel pins instead, and just leave the used primer in the case. And every so often you'll pull the "bullet" and replace the case including primer.
That is a method that was recommended to me, because I did the same as you do now. I've been told it should work, but didn't test it yet.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall, often misattributed to Voltaire
I think I'm thinking, therefore I may possibly be.
Are you saying more stressful than firing live ammo? I shoot live ammo way more than dry firing. I usually dry fire and practice loading/unloading when I get a new gun or if I have a problem. Sometimes just to practice. Many guns are fine to dry fire but some aren't so I just use dummies all the time so I don't have to search through manuals. I was thinking of cutting a notch into the tip of the bullet so it's easily identifiable as a dummy. That will reduce the weight by a little bit.
I used an Xacto knife to cut out some round plugs and they came out ok. If I go with this method I will cut some nice clean ones and fasten them with hot melt. Next round I will make them slightly larger so they compress and fill any spaces around the edges.
The extractor is stressed most, when the case is hit by the ejector, and is applied an angular momentum, throwing it out of the gun. The lever extractor-ejector across the head of the case is quite short, while the lever extractor-bullet is much longer. And the bullet is the most heavy component of the cartridge. So ejecting a full cartridge for the extractor means to apply an enormous momentum on a heavy bullet far away, compared to an empty case, where the center of mass is close to the head, so the mass is considerably lower and the lever is much shorter.
You can even feel this: load an empty case in the chamber and two dummy rounds in the mag. Cock the hammer and quickly rack the slide twice, try to use same force. The empty case flies away without any effort, but with the dummy you feel some magical force stopping the slide at the end, eating away the force you applied. That energy is converted into the momentum of the bullet being ejected. And all this is done by the small, thin extractor and ejector.
I hope I was able to write it down so it makes any sense to you. But after I tried this on my Glock, I was convinced that the force applied is quite large, and will not extend the life of these parts.
A gunsmith told me to never eject full hulls with full force from an 1897 shotgun of not necessary, these ejectors are quite fragile and hard to replace correctly. Also on the Winchester lever guns most ejectors/extractors he had to replace broke during dry firing sessions. He didn't tell about the 1911 in particular, but the physics is the same.
I mostly use the Azoom aluminum dummies for practice, but no real bullets, for that reason. I know they are expensive, but even if the rim doesn't look nice after a few sensations, they still feed and extract well. For my lever gun I made wooden dowel dummies, because it does feed the first Azoom dummy, but the second jams the gun, don't know why, length is OK, and if loaded slowly it works fine, but not in full pace.
EDIT:
My "real" dummy's cases have a hole drilled through them, to clearly mark them. If you got a dremel tool and a small vice, that's very fast to do. Just open the vice, so the case sits on the gap. And don't forget to use two or three strokes with a small round file on each hole. Otherwise the small deformation might jam the dummy in the chamber surprisingly hard. Don't ask why I know...
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall, often misattributed to Voltaire
I think I'm thinking, therefore I may possibly be.
I agree with the wood dowel in place of a bullet, been doing it that way for
a long time. As for the primer, I use silicone. Just seat bullet or dowel
"After" the silicone dries, or seating the bullet will push out the wet silicone..
After cleaning the brass put the used primer back in, works just fine. I only use dummy rounds when using a new lead bullet and need to check that OAL works.
Lets see.
Primer diam is either @.175 or @.211 depending on your flavor of choise!
Buy a yard of this and be done with all the cutting and fiddling eraser thing:
