[colt.45]

i cant think of any way other than someone turning it.

[pauli]

i believe the traditional method is stamping from discs.

ever seen the sesame street classic video segment about making saxophones?

shoot. was that sesame street, or mr rogers?

[P95Carry]

IIRC the main process is stamping and drawing - same can be done with aluminum.

A slug of fully annealed brass is placed in a die and a punch comes down with enough force to displace the material so it ''flows'' - a ductility deal. If a bottleneck then a swaging operation will neck down the mouth. Trim to finish.

The base is left thick of course and has a turning process for the rim and a drilling to get primer pocket and flash hole.

Simplistically speaking I think this about covers it. Others can cororect me me or fill in gaps.

[deadin]

P95,
Right on, except that the "drawing" process with the punch and die is usualy a series of steps. The longer the case, the more steps.
There were/are some custom brass manufactures that actually turn the cases on a lathe. These are usually for obsolete rifle cases like the 40-65 Ballard, etc. They are not only expensive, but usually are much heavier than the drawn cases. For small batches it's probably more cost effective to turn them than making the drawing dies and punches.

Dean

[captainkirk]

Deadin beat me to the punch...

P95 was pretty much on the money with his description, some do anneal the necks after the fact for more "reliability" (read DGR cartridges and military ammo).

I was going to chime in on the very few which are actually "turned" for the rich and famous out there, but deadin got that covered, so I just upped my meager post count for nuttin';)

captainkirk

[RyanM]

Well, see, there's a mommy brass, and a daddy brass, and they love each other very much...

:neener:

[Spec ops Grunt]

Well, see, there's a mommy brass, and a daddy brass, and they love each other very much...

:neener:


You mean a mommy copper and a daddy zinc. :p

[deadin]

Speaking of making cases, I read an article on how the Brits loaded the .303 with cordite. Cordite comes in long strings, kind of like spaghetti. It never occured to me how they got these long strands into a bottleneck case until I read the article. It seems that the drawing of the case stops before the neck is formed. Basically you have a straight case. It was primed, the cordite was inserted and then the neck was formed and the bullet seated.
I've always wondered how many "kabooms" the production line had.:eek:
( I get nervous just tumbling loaded rounds, leave alone case forming.)

Dean

[deadin]

Well, see, there's a mommy brass, and a daddy brass, and they love each other very much...

:neener:

...Choke...Gasp for air

Dean

[bogie]

How it's made?

Very carefully...

Or in the case of most American manufacturers, to the minimum standards required.

Gawd, but I love Lapua.

Some folks have made turned cases for .44 Mag or .45 LC so that they work better with pistol-sized charges of fast powder.

[hrb02]

Well, see, there's a mommy brass, and a daddy brass, and they love each other very much...


ROTFL

[ribbonstone]

On the bright side, once you had your cordite cut into the same length strands, case charging was a matter of adding the same number of strands rather than doing it strictly by weight or volume as you have to do with granulated/ball powders. That simplified the loading process.

there were some trials at making extruded cases during WWII and Korea. Bascially a one step foring preocess rather than several drawings. Didn't work ou well...bass seems at it's best when it drawy partially, then allowed to rest before the next draw.

[RyanM]

Hm, a process of charging and then forming the shoulder may also be how the Brits managed to stuff an obscene amount of black powder into the cases, before they started using cordite. Apparently, no one has been able to replicate the early black powder .303 loads, even with double compression and stuff.

[Hawken50]

no one has been able to replicate the early black powder .303 loads

if no one has been able to replicate "it" how do they know what "it" was? i'm not being a smart a$$, just wondering how, back then, they quantified the performance of a cartridge. they didn't exactly have cronographs.

[RyanM]

I meant, no one has been able to stuff that many grains of black powder in a case. I forget how many it was.

Found it. The standard load, before they switched to cordite, was a 215 grain roundnose bullet ahead of 70 grains of black powder, for 1850 fps. http://www.african-hunter.com/303_british.htm

The case capacity of the .303 British, before putting a bullet in, is 57 grains water. The shortest a .311", 215 gr roundnose can possibly be is 1.1", so it was probably more like 1.25". Case length is 2.222", max cartridge length is 3.075". The absolute minimum amount of space the bullet occupies in the case, then, is 7.6 grains water. That's 49.4 grains of space, and 70 grains of powder. Figure out the rest of the math yourself.

[Hawken50]

ahhh. i thought you were talking velocities.

i guess it's like the proverbial 10 pounds of $#!+ in a 9 pound bag

[warth0g]

if no one has been able to replicate "it" how do they know what "it" was? i'm not being a smart a$$, just wondering how, back then, they quantified the performance of a cartridge. they didn't exactly have cronographs.

They did have other means of measuring speed of bullets. One was having a wheel with paper on it , kind of like the paddles on a steam river boat. The wheel traveled at a set speed and they shoot the bullet thru the paper, then they counted how many papers who had holes in them , and since they know the speed of the "paper" wheel and the amount of papers with holes they could use math to figure out the speed of the bullet.

warthog

[deadin]

You could also "back" into the velocity by knowing the bullet weight and using a ballistic pendulum to get the striking energy.

Dean

[Technosavant]

i believe the traditional method is stamping from discs.

ever seen the sesame street classic video segment about making saxophones?

shoot. was that sesame street, or mr rogers?

IIRC, that was Mr. Rogers.

[redneck2]

P95 was pretty much on the money with his description, some do anneal the necks after the fact for more "reliability" (read DGR cartridges and military ammo).

I read in Handloader Magazine that all cases are annealed. Ones for most applications are polished afterward because most users would think they were somehow defective if they still had the coloring from the annealing. I think the drawing process would harden the brass enough that it would be difficult to load without splitting the case

[Sleeping Dog]

Well, see, there's a mommy brass, and a daddy brass, and they love each other very much...
Great! LOL

That was the mommy .308 and the daddy .30-'06. Then came the baby .223.

It wants to be a .50BMG when it grows up.

[DJJ]

Speaking of making cases, I read an article on how the Brits loaded the .303 with cordite. Cordite comes in long strings, kind of like spaghetti. It never occured to me how they got these long strands into a bottleneck case until I read the article. It seems that the drawing of the case stops before the neck is formed. Basically you have a straight case. It was primed, the cordite was inserted and then the neck was formed and the bullet seated.
I've always wondered how many "kabooms" the production line had.:eek:
( I get nervous just tumbling loaded rounds, leave alone case forming.)

That's why the .300 and .375 H&H, among others, had such a gentle shoulder. That's all the shoulder forming they could (or dared to) do.

And I think the flash holes are pierced, not drilled (except maybe for match brass).

[Infidel]

The base ... has a turning process for the rim and a drilling to get primer pocket and flash hole.
I have been under the impression that the flash hole is punched. And primer pockets look to me like they were formed with the case rather than being drilled.