VZ-52 / 7.62x45 from PPU Blanks - Part II

I got a few hundred of the PPU 7.62x39 Blanks to play with and so far the results have been good. I've fiddled with my process a bit and I think I have it down to a workable process. No machining required.
0. If you are retard stop right here.
1. Modify a Lee Decapping die by grinding the decap pin into a smooth, sharp point.
2. Push each case up into the sharpened and polished decap pin point carefully guiding the point to the center of the crimped blank
3. Dump powder
4. Remove primers. My batch of primers came out and went back in very easy.
5. Use a mini cut off wheel to cut the crimped blank portion of the case off. This is very important to cut just the correct amount. Too much and you end up with a very short neck. Too little and when you size them the case neck will split and make the case unusable in 7.62x45. No wrinkle or tear from the crimped blank end should be left. If you Cut them too short throw them in a pile and cut them back even more to use as 7.62x39's.
6. Don't bother to trim them all nice and pretty yet,
7. Lube cases inside neck and outside
8. Gently size. Don't slam the press arm or you will get a tear in the case neck.
9. Now inside neck chamfer
10. Tumble to remove lube and chips of brass.
11. Re-prime
12. Charge with 25g of IMR 4198 or 11g of Trail Boss. I'm sure others would work. I tried using the blank powder and Cream of Wheat with zero success.
13. Seat a 125'ish gran bullet of .308 or so diameter. You can seat these to a standard length or seat them a ways out.
14. Single load a round and try to fire it. If it fires great, try loading a few in the mag. The 4198 load will cycle the gun and 9 times out of 10 form a nice case. The trail boss load won't cycle but you almost never ruin a case. If your round does not fire you may need to carefully place it under the extractor and gently chamber it. The extractor will hold the case well enough to get it to fire. Seating a bullet with a fat profile far enough out sometime will do this for you. But bullet profiles vary and some won't push the case back up against the breech face no matter how far out you seat them.
15. Now Tumble, Lube, Resize, Trim as normal and you have usable 7.62x45 brass with no machining required.
Don't worry about them getting trimmed below 45mm. I've had cases down to 43'ish mm work and load just fine.
This is from fire forming with Trail Boss. You can see what happens when you don't get enough powder in them vs ones with a full enough charge.
~200 more to fire form

Swampman said:

Pretty cool!

Have you considered necking up to .323" or so and using the 7.62x45 size die to form a false shoulder before fire forming?

You might lose a few more cases while expanding them, but your headspace control would be better.

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No. I'n not sure what that would do for me. I do use the 7.62x45 die to size them prior to fire forming. After the first firing, the fire forming, headspace is no longer an issue.
Oh I see what you are saying. That could work. I'll try a few on the next batch.

JO JO said:

I read somewhere that blank brass cases are not made to the same standard as live fire brass and are not safe to reload
you may want to verify this with ppu first ,

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I've reloaded many 223 blanks over the years as 300 Blackouts and never had any abnormal failures.
The PSI for the 7.62x45 is like ~65k. I'm only loading around ~35k to 40k PSI, just enough to cycle the action reliably. I've had one case head separation out of 10 on the 6th load of a blank case.