Hummer70
Member
Title is kind of misleading as this will cover restoring a 1874 Italian Vetterli, chamber modifications, case forming up to the point of reloading and bullet selections I have tried.
Got a call a couple months back asking me if I wanted a rifle they didn't know what they had that no one in that part of the wife's family wanted. Now what kind of a question is that? Of course I wanted it, didn't care what if was.
We left immediately to go get it and walked in and it was laying on the floor and I recognized it as a Vetterli but had never looked at one as I knew there was no ammo. I have had a 71 Mauser (Spandau 1880) since about 1976 and a mold and cast/load for it and a 6.5 Daudeteau (71 Mauser Conversion in 30s) I have dies and load for it as well. I got both for like 65.00 each in 70s so I knew this one was coming to a "loving home" where it would see TLC the rest of my days anyhow.
As we sat there I was amazed the stock stamps were nice and rifle obviously had never been to the party zone anywhere it its 142 year history but talk about issues it had a serious problem.
I opened the bolt and when I attempted to close it, the striker seared off and went home just as I started rotating the bolt. That elevated the threat level to DEFCON 4 and I knew that was going to be corrected ASAP.
I looked it over and could not figure how to get the bolt out and two days later I finally discovered a nice thread with pics showing how such is accomplished. It requires three screwdrivers and a big vice to accomplish but I got the bolt out and looked down the bore. Talk about disappointment, it was the worst looking barrel I ever saw and I have seen plenty. I could see absolutely no signs of rifling from either end as it was black from chamber to muzzle.
I ran 30 cal patches down it with Ed's Red wrapped around a 38 cal bore brush and made passes but absolutely no visible change. This was beginning to look really bad so I got a cast 45-70 bullet, tapped it partially into the muzzle and poured some Ed's Red in from chamber and to my surprise the bullet plug did not let any ER through so I filled the bore all the way the back of the chamber, placed the muzzle in a jar and propped it in a corner and left it for about five days.
While waiting for that I started looking at the sear surfaces. To my relief the trigger sear engagement looked mint but the striker sear was something to behold. Whoever did the trigger job on it wasn't a gunsmith and probably had never met one. It was rounded off badly and to make matters worse was not even parallel with the trigger sear! ! ! ! They only contacted about 30%.
I have a buddy that specializes in precision TIG welding so a call was made and he said bring it over and off I went. I told him I wanted it built up on the nose about .050" and on the bottom surfaces about .075" and he said he would get to it that week and I assured him there was no hurry. He used the soft rod and not the hard as I didn't want to wear the trigger sear.
In the interim I surfed the net looking for surgical information on the Vetterlis and there was not much but I was gaining knowledge while the barrel soaked and the sear was waiting for surgery.
I pulled up Quick Load and found the Vetterli but the land/groove data was not correct for my rifle so I changed that as I had internally miced them and I had .429 grooves so I changed bore dimensions on the program and started looking at propellant possibilities and pressure curves. I was not particularly impressed with the sharp spike pressure curves on most of them but I liked what I saw with Blue Dot. I had about 4 oz left in a can so I went to a reloader specialty place in town and got a can and a 45 cal bore brush as I could not find one in my stuff.
Got home and drained the ER out of the bore and started the colonoscopy on the bore with the brush. I brushed and patched and all kinds of black crud came out and I wore it down to where it wasn't doing anything much but at least I could see rifling.
I plugged and refilled the bore with ER and let it set for another week and in the interim I found a 45 cal brush in my stuff and after a week I repeated the above but this time the bore was beginning to look usable. I still had a rough spot about 12" long about six inches from muzzle so I cut a piece of 250 grit Alox cloth about a inch wide and two inches long and cut a slit in middle. I eased it over a patch on the 38 cal brush and made six passes in the bore and that did it, I figured the bore was then about 97% and was definitely going to be fed soon.
At this point I am thinking the original ammo for these were well greased and I am assuming deposited all kinds of grease on the barrel wall and a hundred years sitting up had dried out and got hard.
I did research on Vetterli dies and found them listed for 36.00 to 296.00. I had read of the Swiss dies being a shorter version of the Italian version so I took a chance and bought the Swiss dies and the good news is they work fine for the Italian ammo version if you back off the FL die about .129" so at the top of the travel you have that gap between the shell holder and the bottom of the die. I used pieces of flat stock and .126" stock would allow it to rise all the way to the top and not touch and .131 stock would not allow it to rise.
Next I got the striker back TIG welded up and chucked it in my mill and reground the sear surface with a surface grinding fixture I made up. I took the engagement surface down to about .035 engagement as I want to see if there is going to be any wear first off. Next I rounded the face of the sear to obtain 100% contact with the trigger sear. Now when the bolt closes the sears do not contact until the bolt starts to turn and they are now gently brought together instead of being slammed together.
Once I have several hundred rounds on it I will take a closer look at the sears and maybe reduce the sear engagement. The rifle I have does not have a two stage trigger unfortunately. It now feels like a issue M16 trigger with creep and maybe eight pounds. It it heavy enough that trying to get a good shot offhand is gonna be iffy. I definitely don't want to dry fire it much as from what I understand all the spare parts ever made went down with the Titanic. One article I read said they were "unobtainum".
Next I read all I could find on brass and learned brass is made from 8MM Lebel or 358 Winchester cases and Jamison was a current manufacturer of 348 Win so I ordered 50 cases made by Jamison. I am impressed with several things about their brass. (1) the primer pockets are snug. (2) It takes expansion from 348 to 44 cal in one pass with no problems in 50 rounds. (3) Best I can determine it is quite uniform and I will in all probability order another 50 cases. I started out with 5 cases and started working them up and I figured out pretty quickly that it wasn't a good idea to try and use the expander supplied with the die as it cannot be torqued down enough to expand the neck properly and slips upward quickly. I wasn't about to spend a mint on more expanders so I designed a expander that absolutely will not move up or down once set.(see it below)
First thing is to trim the overall length of the case and I fabricated a collet I could slide over the 348 Jamison case, grip it tightly in a 3 jaw chuck with no deformation, then used a 5/8" end mill chucked in tail stock to reduce the overall length to about two inches. Note: this is a rough trim dimension and not final.
I had read that some folks trimmed at different lengths and I called one of the top cartridge collectors in the country and asked him if he had ammo for the Vetterli and he had four rounds of Remington ammo. He wanted to send me one and I told him all I really needed was the diameter of the loaded necks and the length of the cases and he sent this:
Neck Case
.438 1.873
.436 1.870
.437 1.866
.438 1.876
I had also read some folks trimmed their cases at 1.880 and my hole gage indicated I needed necks closer to .452 diameter. Since I had overshortened the first case I used it for a test case and for some reason it would not go in the chamber so I took a looksee with my bore scope and as suspected there was rust build up in the chamber.
At the same time I took my Mitutoyo hole gage and measured the back of the chamber and the front and realized the back measured .471 and I measured the Jamison cases and they were .473. I have read that some have made special dies to force the brass smaller but I used the logic is there hasn't been ammo loaded for this caliber since the 1950s, not likely to be any more, I needed to get rid of rust in chamber so I polished the chamber out to .474 so the now cases will just go in and not likely to expand on firing.
I guess I spent about 12 hours on polishing the chamber larger as I knew this was a once in a lifetime barrel and I eased up on the .474 dimension very easy. I turned a fixture that would hold strips of Alox cloth and I drilled a hole cross ways and did multiple turn sessions by hand and measuring often. I made a GO Gage so to speak and turned it to .474 and kept polishing and trying it till it just went in.
I made up a gage for the neck that measured .452 and ran it in and I determined I could set my case length longer so I decided to try it at 1.885". Note: I have read several accounts that the bores and chambers on these rifles exhibit a wide tolerance range so you will in all likelihood need to adjust for your rifle accordingly.
I also read you could and you could not use 44 Mag dies to size cases and that is yes and no. I won't go into all the experimenting I did but will just go straight to the final procedure I now use which seems to be fine. Note: I have a RCBS Carbide FL die for 44 Mag and it has made a terrific NECK SIZE and NECK FORMING DIE as follows:
1. After trimming the case to about two inches or a tad shorter I then anneal the case necks as the area below the old shoulder will now be the new neck and this is much thicker stock and it will have to be trimmed a tad more.
In my annealing I set a variable speed drill to turn at 50-60 RPMs, then with bright blue internal flame adjusted to about 1" long I touch it below the turning case about 1/8" below the shoulder and with these cases I moved it slowly forward counting to about 8 (seconds) and dropped it into the container. They are not dropped in water. This duplicates the RPMs established by Frankford Arsenal in the mid 30s when they decided to anneal the shoulders/necks and stress relieve the 30.06 cases and my data came from Arsenal archives a good friend has access to. Note: At FA the 30.06 cases were in the flames about five seconds or so. I do a count of 6 (seconds) on my 06 cases and I can duplicate the color of the FA cases and LC cases perfectly.
2. Next I expand the necks with the threaded expander in the picture. Finished in one pass. Grease expander before every case with fingers. This is another reason I chose the 348 brass as the Lebel brass would have to make the trip from .323 to .430 and I wanted to arrive at the larger dimension with thicker neck walls.
I call this tool the Humpyspander. Take 7/8" rod stock and cut it 3" long. Thread half of it 7/8X14, then insert threaded area in to two 7/8X14TPI nuts and chuck in 3 jaw and secure with a lock nut to protect the threads and square the small end before turning it down. Then I started turning the reduced area to .430". Once there move to the right and run cross feed in about .015" every 1/8th inch getting down to about .340". Then draw file this area into a smooth taper and polish with Alox cloth till you get finish you like. As indicated grease the expander with fingers before every case is run up on it. Every last case expanded just fine on one pass. The lock ring is just there for a location point and helps running the tool in top of my press. The expander lock ring does not contact the press in use and it is free to move around as I want the tool and case mouth to find their own centers and it works fine not tightened down.
In the above pic the case has been pushed up the tapered section and stopped right at the start of the .430 area. At this point the case has not been introduced to the 41 Swiss die and basically what you see here was all done with the 44 Mag carbide FL die. The case body is original 348 and will fireform and change to fit the chamber.
3. Next I run the cases into the 44 Mag just a little starting at about 1/8" and trying it in rifle, then run case in a little further and try in rifle. I keep running neck in and making the new shoulder lower and lower until a empty case will chamber with little or no difficulty. Note: In the trial stages you may get a stuck case. Do not attempt to remove the case with the bolt. Instead I took a piece of 3/8" drill rod, eased it in the muzzle and let it rest on bottom inside of the case and then raise and bump the case a tad and the bolt will come right back and not put any strain on the extractor. Remember I said the spare parts for these went down with the Titanic.
4. Next I trim the case to 1.885" with a L.E. Wilson case trimmer. This was a little tricky at first as L E Wilson made a shell holder for the 348 Winchester at one time, don't know about now (I have one) but it is on the long side as I had to cut the neck off the original case so I took some 1" round stock and made a shell holder for the shortened case. The taper on the 348 is under 1 degree and I set compound with a dial indicator and made two shell holders, one for unfired 348 and one for the fired Vetterli case. I chamfer the case mouths inside and outside after wards.
5. I then run the cases up on the expander one more time and take them to the lathe, chuck up the case in the same collet chuck I fabricated and the neck slides over a .429 mandrel. My necks need to be no larger than .452 and the necks run a few thou bigger so I make a pass with a carbide cutter and thin the neck to .451 range for about 1/8". The shoulder on the Vetterli cases opens up so quick that there is no reason to trim it further back.
Note: The case on the left is one time fired. The case on the right is ready to load and fire. Note the very small area I turned the neck down to .451 range. These cases were not sized in the 41 Swiss die, completely worked up with the 44 Mag Carbide die used as a neck die. It is obvious there is very little neck to hold follow on bullets and I have them so close to the chamber that on some of the cases there is no need to size the neck as there is enough neck tension to reload it after replacing primer and adding propellant.
If I am lucky I might be able to tag a coyote with it at some point as there are plenty around here that need to be thinned out.
6. Cases are then ready to prime and load. My first shots were with 180 gr. 44 Mag JHP bullets which were too light and wanted to collapse the case mouth that sprang back quickly before the bullet left the muzzle and the mouth wanted to close. I next changed to 240 gr JHP 44 Mag Sierra bullets. First group with 10 gr. Blue dot shot a 3" group at 50 yards from a cold/clean barrel. Four shots were 1 1/4" and the flier made it about 3".
So far I have increased the Blue Dot 1 grain at a time and last test I fired 15 grains and rounds are still sub sonic.
I just scored a Lyman 429421 mold and it is dropping bullets at 257 grains so that will come shortly. I also got some Sierra 300 gr. 44 Mag JSP jacketed bullets that may come later.
I am using a lube formula I got from Ed Harris and I am applying it with a brush instead of tumbling the bullets. The formula is Lee Alox lube cut 50/50 with Mineral Spirits and it applies easily and dries quickly. I just got in my .429 Lee bullet sizer today so I will size the cast bullets then relube the bearing areas with Ed's formula and they should be ready to shoot.
At this point I am going to try to keep my loads sub sonic as this velocity with heavy bullet should deliver a through and through on about anything I am hunting with it per Col Martin Fackler MD who was the Commander/Director of the Army Wound Ballistics Lab who told me my 222 grain cast 357 bullets would deliver such performance at 800 FPS. I have run the numbers on Sierra Infinity 5 program and I am figuring zero the rifle at about 90 yards and I will be good to go up to 125 yards which is about as far as I can hope to see in the woods in this area.
The next problem will be attaching a front sight that is higher than the original in order to try and obtain Point of Aim/ Point of Impact (POA/POI) at the range I want to hunt. The rifle has no windage adjustment so I am thinking now make a block that can be clamped around the muzzle area and a dovetail on the top that matches the M14 front sight and that once I get close I will file the final dimension and loosen and move the front sight laterally to take care of windage and same time. Note the front sight on the rifle was machined at Torino and is visably offset to the right.
Right now my loads are grouping about 2" left at 50 yards.
Hope this helps anyone wanting to get set up for the shooting these fine old rifles. Last 15 cases I prepped took 55 minutes from factory to ready to load.
Got a call a couple months back asking me if I wanted a rifle they didn't know what they had that no one in that part of the wife's family wanted. Now what kind of a question is that? Of course I wanted it, didn't care what if was.
We left immediately to go get it and walked in and it was laying on the floor and I recognized it as a Vetterli but had never looked at one as I knew there was no ammo. I have had a 71 Mauser (Spandau 1880) since about 1976 and a mold and cast/load for it and a 6.5 Daudeteau (71 Mauser Conversion in 30s) I have dies and load for it as well. I got both for like 65.00 each in 70s so I knew this one was coming to a "loving home" where it would see TLC the rest of my days anyhow.
As we sat there I was amazed the stock stamps were nice and rifle obviously had never been to the party zone anywhere it its 142 year history but talk about issues it had a serious problem.
I opened the bolt and when I attempted to close it, the striker seared off and went home just as I started rotating the bolt. That elevated the threat level to DEFCON 4 and I knew that was going to be corrected ASAP.
I looked it over and could not figure how to get the bolt out and two days later I finally discovered a nice thread with pics showing how such is accomplished. It requires three screwdrivers and a big vice to accomplish but I got the bolt out and looked down the bore. Talk about disappointment, it was the worst looking barrel I ever saw and I have seen plenty. I could see absolutely no signs of rifling from either end as it was black from chamber to muzzle.
I ran 30 cal patches down it with Ed's Red wrapped around a 38 cal bore brush and made passes but absolutely no visible change. This was beginning to look really bad so I got a cast 45-70 bullet, tapped it partially into the muzzle and poured some Ed's Red in from chamber and to my surprise the bullet plug did not let any ER through so I filled the bore all the way the back of the chamber, placed the muzzle in a jar and propped it in a corner and left it for about five days.
While waiting for that I started looking at the sear surfaces. To my relief the trigger sear engagement looked mint but the striker sear was something to behold. Whoever did the trigger job on it wasn't a gunsmith and probably had never met one. It was rounded off badly and to make matters worse was not even parallel with the trigger sear! ! ! ! They only contacted about 30%.
I have a buddy that specializes in precision TIG welding so a call was made and he said bring it over and off I went. I told him I wanted it built up on the nose about .050" and on the bottom surfaces about .075" and he said he would get to it that week and I assured him there was no hurry. He used the soft rod and not the hard as I didn't want to wear the trigger sear.
In the interim I surfed the net looking for surgical information on the Vetterlis and there was not much but I was gaining knowledge while the barrel soaked and the sear was waiting for surgery.
I pulled up Quick Load and found the Vetterli but the land/groove data was not correct for my rifle so I changed that as I had internally miced them and I had .429 grooves so I changed bore dimensions on the program and started looking at propellant possibilities and pressure curves. I was not particularly impressed with the sharp spike pressure curves on most of them but I liked what I saw with Blue Dot. I had about 4 oz left in a can so I went to a reloader specialty place in town and got a can and a 45 cal bore brush as I could not find one in my stuff.
Got home and drained the ER out of the bore and started the colonoscopy on the bore with the brush. I brushed and patched and all kinds of black crud came out and I wore it down to where it wasn't doing anything much but at least I could see rifling.
I plugged and refilled the bore with ER and let it set for another week and in the interim I found a 45 cal brush in my stuff and after a week I repeated the above but this time the bore was beginning to look usable. I still had a rough spot about 12" long about six inches from muzzle so I cut a piece of 250 grit Alox cloth about a inch wide and two inches long and cut a slit in middle. I eased it over a patch on the 38 cal brush and made six passes in the bore and that did it, I figured the bore was then about 97% and was definitely going to be fed soon.
At this point I am thinking the original ammo for these were well greased and I am assuming deposited all kinds of grease on the barrel wall and a hundred years sitting up had dried out and got hard.
I did research on Vetterli dies and found them listed for 36.00 to 296.00. I had read of the Swiss dies being a shorter version of the Italian version so I took a chance and bought the Swiss dies and the good news is they work fine for the Italian ammo version if you back off the FL die about .129" so at the top of the travel you have that gap between the shell holder and the bottom of the die. I used pieces of flat stock and .126" stock would allow it to rise all the way to the top and not touch and .131 stock would not allow it to rise.
Next I got the striker back TIG welded up and chucked it in my mill and reground the sear surface with a surface grinding fixture I made up. I took the engagement surface down to about .035 engagement as I want to see if there is going to be any wear first off. Next I rounded the face of the sear to obtain 100% contact with the trigger sear. Now when the bolt closes the sears do not contact until the bolt starts to turn and they are now gently brought together instead of being slammed together.
Once I have several hundred rounds on it I will take a closer look at the sears and maybe reduce the sear engagement. The rifle I have does not have a two stage trigger unfortunately. It now feels like a issue M16 trigger with creep and maybe eight pounds. It it heavy enough that trying to get a good shot offhand is gonna be iffy. I definitely don't want to dry fire it much as from what I understand all the spare parts ever made went down with the Titanic. One article I read said they were "unobtainum".
Next I read all I could find on brass and learned brass is made from 8MM Lebel or 358 Winchester cases and Jamison was a current manufacturer of 348 Win so I ordered 50 cases made by Jamison. I am impressed with several things about their brass. (1) the primer pockets are snug. (2) It takes expansion from 348 to 44 cal in one pass with no problems in 50 rounds. (3) Best I can determine it is quite uniform and I will in all probability order another 50 cases. I started out with 5 cases and started working them up and I figured out pretty quickly that it wasn't a good idea to try and use the expander supplied with the die as it cannot be torqued down enough to expand the neck properly and slips upward quickly. I wasn't about to spend a mint on more expanders so I designed a expander that absolutely will not move up or down once set.(see it below)
First thing is to trim the overall length of the case and I fabricated a collet I could slide over the 348 Jamison case, grip it tightly in a 3 jaw chuck with no deformation, then used a 5/8" end mill chucked in tail stock to reduce the overall length to about two inches. Note: this is a rough trim dimension and not final.
I had read that some folks trimmed at different lengths and I called one of the top cartridge collectors in the country and asked him if he had ammo for the Vetterli and he had four rounds of Remington ammo. He wanted to send me one and I told him all I really needed was the diameter of the loaded necks and the length of the cases and he sent this:
Neck Case
.438 1.873
.436 1.870
.437 1.866
.438 1.876
I had also read some folks trimmed their cases at 1.880 and my hole gage indicated I needed necks closer to .452 diameter. Since I had overshortened the first case I used it for a test case and for some reason it would not go in the chamber so I took a looksee with my bore scope and as suspected there was rust build up in the chamber.
At the same time I took my Mitutoyo hole gage and measured the back of the chamber and the front and realized the back measured .471 and I measured the Jamison cases and they were .473. I have read that some have made special dies to force the brass smaller but I used the logic is there hasn't been ammo loaded for this caliber since the 1950s, not likely to be any more, I needed to get rid of rust in chamber so I polished the chamber out to .474 so the now cases will just go in and not likely to expand on firing.
I guess I spent about 12 hours on polishing the chamber larger as I knew this was a once in a lifetime barrel and I eased up on the .474 dimension very easy. I turned a fixture that would hold strips of Alox cloth and I drilled a hole cross ways and did multiple turn sessions by hand and measuring often. I made a GO Gage so to speak and turned it to .474 and kept polishing and trying it till it just went in.
I made up a gage for the neck that measured .452 and ran it in and I determined I could set my case length longer so I decided to try it at 1.885". Note: I have read several accounts that the bores and chambers on these rifles exhibit a wide tolerance range so you will in all likelihood need to adjust for your rifle accordingly.
I also read you could and you could not use 44 Mag dies to size cases and that is yes and no. I won't go into all the experimenting I did but will just go straight to the final procedure I now use which seems to be fine. Note: I have a RCBS Carbide FL die for 44 Mag and it has made a terrific NECK SIZE and NECK FORMING DIE as follows:
1. After trimming the case to about two inches or a tad shorter I then anneal the case necks as the area below the old shoulder will now be the new neck and this is much thicker stock and it will have to be trimmed a tad more.
In my annealing I set a variable speed drill to turn at 50-60 RPMs, then with bright blue internal flame adjusted to about 1" long I touch it below the turning case about 1/8" below the shoulder and with these cases I moved it slowly forward counting to about 8 (seconds) and dropped it into the container. They are not dropped in water. This duplicates the RPMs established by Frankford Arsenal in the mid 30s when they decided to anneal the shoulders/necks and stress relieve the 30.06 cases and my data came from Arsenal archives a good friend has access to. Note: At FA the 30.06 cases were in the flames about five seconds or so. I do a count of 6 (seconds) on my 06 cases and I can duplicate the color of the FA cases and LC cases perfectly.
2. Next I expand the necks with the threaded expander in the picture. Finished in one pass. Grease expander before every case with fingers. This is another reason I chose the 348 brass as the Lebel brass would have to make the trip from .323 to .430 and I wanted to arrive at the larger dimension with thicker neck walls.
I call this tool the Humpyspander. Take 7/8" rod stock and cut it 3" long. Thread half of it 7/8X14, then insert threaded area in to two 7/8X14TPI nuts and chuck in 3 jaw and secure with a lock nut to protect the threads and square the small end before turning it down. Then I started turning the reduced area to .430". Once there move to the right and run cross feed in about .015" every 1/8th inch getting down to about .340". Then draw file this area into a smooth taper and polish with Alox cloth till you get finish you like. As indicated grease the expander with fingers before every case is run up on it. Every last case expanded just fine on one pass. The lock ring is just there for a location point and helps running the tool in top of my press. The expander lock ring does not contact the press in use and it is free to move around as I want the tool and case mouth to find their own centers and it works fine not tightened down.
In the above pic the case has been pushed up the tapered section and stopped right at the start of the .430 area. At this point the case has not been introduced to the 41 Swiss die and basically what you see here was all done with the 44 Mag carbide FL die. The case body is original 348 and will fireform and change to fit the chamber.
3. Next I run the cases into the 44 Mag just a little starting at about 1/8" and trying it in rifle, then run case in a little further and try in rifle. I keep running neck in and making the new shoulder lower and lower until a empty case will chamber with little or no difficulty. Note: In the trial stages you may get a stuck case. Do not attempt to remove the case with the bolt. Instead I took a piece of 3/8" drill rod, eased it in the muzzle and let it rest on bottom inside of the case and then raise and bump the case a tad and the bolt will come right back and not put any strain on the extractor. Remember I said the spare parts for these went down with the Titanic.
4. Next I trim the case to 1.885" with a L.E. Wilson case trimmer. This was a little tricky at first as L E Wilson made a shell holder for the 348 Winchester at one time, don't know about now (I have one) but it is on the long side as I had to cut the neck off the original case so I took some 1" round stock and made a shell holder for the shortened case. The taper on the 348 is under 1 degree and I set compound with a dial indicator and made two shell holders, one for unfired 348 and one for the fired Vetterli case. I chamfer the case mouths inside and outside after wards.
5. I then run the cases up on the expander one more time and take them to the lathe, chuck up the case in the same collet chuck I fabricated and the neck slides over a .429 mandrel. My necks need to be no larger than .452 and the necks run a few thou bigger so I make a pass with a carbide cutter and thin the neck to .451 range for about 1/8". The shoulder on the Vetterli cases opens up so quick that there is no reason to trim it further back.
Note: The case on the left is one time fired. The case on the right is ready to load and fire. Note the very small area I turned the neck down to .451 range. These cases were not sized in the 41 Swiss die, completely worked up with the 44 Mag Carbide die used as a neck die. It is obvious there is very little neck to hold follow on bullets and I have them so close to the chamber that on some of the cases there is no need to size the neck as there is enough neck tension to reload it after replacing primer and adding propellant.
If I am lucky I might be able to tag a coyote with it at some point as there are plenty around here that need to be thinned out.
6. Cases are then ready to prime and load. My first shots were with 180 gr. 44 Mag JHP bullets which were too light and wanted to collapse the case mouth that sprang back quickly before the bullet left the muzzle and the mouth wanted to close. I next changed to 240 gr JHP 44 Mag Sierra bullets. First group with 10 gr. Blue dot shot a 3" group at 50 yards from a cold/clean barrel. Four shots were 1 1/4" and the flier made it about 3".
So far I have increased the Blue Dot 1 grain at a time and last test I fired 15 grains and rounds are still sub sonic.
I just scored a Lyman 429421 mold and it is dropping bullets at 257 grains so that will come shortly. I also got some Sierra 300 gr. 44 Mag JSP jacketed bullets that may come later.
I am using a lube formula I got from Ed Harris and I am applying it with a brush instead of tumbling the bullets. The formula is Lee Alox lube cut 50/50 with Mineral Spirits and it applies easily and dries quickly. I just got in my .429 Lee bullet sizer today so I will size the cast bullets then relube the bearing areas with Ed's formula and they should be ready to shoot.
At this point I am going to try to keep my loads sub sonic as this velocity with heavy bullet should deliver a through and through on about anything I am hunting with it per Col Martin Fackler MD who was the Commander/Director of the Army Wound Ballistics Lab who told me my 222 grain cast 357 bullets would deliver such performance at 800 FPS. I have run the numbers on Sierra Infinity 5 program and I am figuring zero the rifle at about 90 yards and I will be good to go up to 125 yards which is about as far as I can hope to see in the woods in this area.
The next problem will be attaching a front sight that is higher than the original in order to try and obtain Point of Aim/ Point of Impact (POA/POI) at the range I want to hunt. The rifle has no windage adjustment so I am thinking now make a block that can be clamped around the muzzle area and a dovetail on the top that matches the M14 front sight and that once I get close I will file the final dimension and loosen and move the front sight laterally to take care of windage and same time. Note the front sight on the rifle was machined at Torino and is visably offset to the right.
Right now my loads are grouping about 2" left at 50 yards.
Hope this helps anyone wanting to get set up for the shooting these fine old rifles. Last 15 cases I prepped took 55 minutes from factory to ready to load.
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Based on your skill level, you probably have a $1000 in this rifle. 
