Short Hornady brass?

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GRV01
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Short Hornady brass?

Post by GRV01 »

I know tgis has come up before for other reloaders of different calibers that some of Hornadys brass was made slightly shorter to keep some of their ammo types (LEVERevolution?) within COAL but im only vaguely recalling this

Was this an issue with all Hornady brass or just some of their rifle ammos for levers eg 45-70, 30-30?

I bought a batch of mixed nickled* brass in 44 Special from gunbroker and over half of it was Hornady and while i tried to measure thosr against the rest (Starline and Sig) it didnt turn out well since my caliper is on the fritz but want to avoid any issues if those rounds end up being too short to cycle well in a levergun

*Im loading both Mag and Special since im buying Special only pistols and so must, for now, have both lengths of brass with the mag being fired from Rossi M92s. Im loading mag in regular brass and Special in nickled brass to make it easy to differentiate at a glance
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Re: Short Hornady brass?

Post by RBHarter »

Yes Hornady LevEvolution brass is short to accommodate the flex tip and manipulate BC etc . One of the greatest joys of hand loading is that you can set up your COAL or OAL anywhere you need or want it . (Adjusting the powder charges accordingly of course) .
In your case where I suspect that eventually you will either trade the pistols up to Mags or load only Specials for everything I would probably trim the Hornady LevEvolution brass to Special and roll with it . If you get Special cases in the mag run and don't catch them you'll have a mag charge in a special case at magnum length and it will stand out when you do your boxing .

The very worst possible case would be to get one of the so loaded Special cases in and older Colt or copy that wasn't produced in run with mags . That would cause a blow up . If you're running a full tilt 44 Magnum in a tight chamber , throat ,bbl and gap gun .

If memory serves me , typical mag loads start about a gr over the standard Special max loads . In reality the increase in case capacity (speaking loosely to long time loaders with an vital point to be made in general terms from 38/357 to 45 Schofield/Colts) swallow that first increase . DONT MAKE IT A HABIT IT WILL BITE YOU ! In the case of the Ruger platforms the original BlackHawk large frame was built for the 44 Mag with a 180% fail factor . So running your Colts 14,000 psi max up to the 21,000 of the 45 ACP isn't a big deal with a chassis built to run 25,000 rounds of 35,000 psi 44 Magnum . It is a big deal in an Uberti SAA that is built only as a 14,000 psi platform that has a 25,000 psi fail limit and you feed it a bunch of just over start Magnum loads that are starting at 20-25kpsi with a 35kpsi max .

Your plan to keep them in different cases is a good start .
I fall victim here also my grandfather left me a 38 Special unfortunately I have a can of 357 loads for a 38/357 rifle that are just over 357 start loads and seated to 357 length ..... Not a problem when I only owned a 357 Security 6 and a 357/38 1894 CB ........ The moment the 47' M10 landed in my hand it became a problem then my Dad needed a 75 yd carbine and I was drooling over an A5 Mag he had and now it's a bigger problem in 2 30 cal cans painted bright orange with black stencil "FOR 357 ONLY!!!" all over them and in another 4-5 yr I will get the last of those empty .......
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Re: Short Hornady brass?

Post by Ohio3Wheels »

I was thinking that only the Hornady 45-70 brass was short. Truthfully I didn't check the 35 Rem I have from one box of fired factory just load to the same OAL I use with Rem ad Fed cases.

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Re: Short Hornady brass?

Post by GasGuzzler »

RB, that's funny. I have only one .38 only and it won't chamber a .357. Even so I tore down about 500 rounds of .38 with a whammer because I don't shoot .38 in my BH or SRC92 and don't shoot the .38 only M88 much. Saved powder and bullets. Someone else wanted the primed brass a lot more than I did.
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Re: Short Hornady brass?

Post by GRV01 »

Well i couldve saved us all a lot of time if i had just checked Hornadys website and turns out they dont make LEVERevolution in 44spl so we're good and as for powder im loading my Special rounds with HP38 now and when i finally run out (taking a while so far with average load at ~4gr :( ) ill be using Trail Boss (unless someone can recommend another low velocity powder with high case volume)

Mag rounds are HS6 until im out of that (soon, using 10gr per round) then switching to 4227

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