Alright here goes my Poor's attempt to make some Valkyrie brass. Enough at least to standardize on one brand for a bit.
A teaser.
Federal once fired capacity is 32.4 gr
Hornady Twice fired is 31.2 gr
Starline once fired is 31.9 gr
??? Mystery brass 1 x fire formed is 32.7 gr
The bad news is I have to burn components to form this Franken brass.
Left - Right: Unmodified 6mm, Neck down with Redding Type S FL die & .248 bushing, Fire formed, Far right is Starline 224.
Any guesses yet?
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I did anneal prior to necking down & trimmed to 1.584 (about .008). After firing they avg 1.593. Did a mock up when setting up the sizer to leave a false shoulder. Just ran the bushing down till they would chamber. The datum/shoulder on these are .018 short of the Valk. Loaded these -.010 from the lands.
Didn't put a chrono on these but I'd guess 2950 ish. Good enough for practice shooting steel off bags. Had about 6 mph wind today, didn't matter & didn't care, @300 held center 8" plate - hit everytime.
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I'm new to this fire forming crap, so I made a few mistakes with the first 100, but I'm happy to end up with 98 good fire formed cases. The 2 lost are due to loose primer pockets when I de-capped them. Loads were a we bit hot for fire forming. I've got 400 left to hone my skills.
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My mistakes:
So for a load, my rookie ass used 25gr of 8208 under a 69gr RMR (left the cat litter in the HP).
- To hell with the mandrel, next set I'll just neck with the bushing and seat.
- I stepped on these fuckers a little hard for a fire forming load. Next time I'll have more neck tension & back off on powder.
Have a few thousand of these primers so I figured I'd give them a try. Compared to CCI #41 the Wolf seat a little tighter.
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Yeah they were a little hot. Primers on right are from these fire form loads. The 2 on left are from a 224 Starline Lever load & a 6ARC Lever load.
A little extra rounded. So I tested the primer pockets pretty hard & 98 felt good coming out. Another interesting observation is this. The 2 cases that went loose on the pockets stayed at the exact trim length of 1.584, all the others grew to 1.593.
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OK you got this far so What the Fuck are they.
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This is Important! 24 Nosler Brass requires a Std. .223/5.56 Bolt!!!!
I just swapped my 6.8 bolt for a spare .223, it ran fine. The shoulder length of the fire formed 24 Nosler using the 223 bolt is .002 shorter than Valkyrie brass from the 6.8 bolt.
This would be a pretty good solution for .223 bolt guns that want to screw on a Valkyrie barrel. A 223 Tika with a PVA Valk pre fit would be pretty sweet.
Don't know how well this will hold up, but now that I've got formed cases I'll see how it does with 88 ELD's & Lever. Will update after a few loading's.
I said in the beginning this was a poor's solution. Here's why. The 24 Nosler was such a turd they're blowing the brass out on clearance $99.95 per 250 with free shipping. That's the only reason I gave this a try.
It's probably more practical to just pick up a few cases of the cheap Federal 75 TMJ's for the brass, but it was a fun experiment.
So its a 22 Nosler? I may have read over it