Homemade 45 acp shotshell die

[jmorris]

I found a suitable donor die in my stash, an RCBS 44mag/SPL die. Ran a file across it and found that it was way too hard to machine.

So I heated it up to take the heat treat out of it.

At that point I drilled and tapped it 1/2-20 and and reamed the inside to resize the case and form the neck down portion.

With the cases formed I then machined down a grade 5 bold to act as a mandrel to push the over shot wad down below the crimp. The crimp mandrel was made with a 1/2" ball end mill and slides over the over shot wad mandrel.

This way you only use the one die, just remove the insert to form and replace it to seat the over shot wad and crimp.

With the old Remington shot rounds I am about out of I had to use a specific magazine but the new formed cases feed with all that I tried, in my "farm" 45 at least.

Cases are made from cut down 308 brass. Now all I need to do is make some over shot wads and cut down some .410 wads, to load a few up.

 

[mdmp5]

That looks like a lot of fun. Report back after you shoot your shells. What are you gonna load it with for shot?

 

[former naval person]

In my homemade shot shells I found #9 shot best. The factory #12 wouldn't penetrate well enough for kills on feral cat size animals.

 

[Gunfighter14e2]

I run # 8's in mine. Every 3-4 months or so we do a clay target match. Guy stands behind the shooter an throws them over the shooters shoulder. We allow the shooter to call pull, ( or what every they want to say) one guy says F**k-it. LOL If there is a tie we throw doubles, but some guys have not got their weapons to cycle yet, and those that have ain't telling either. I picked up my RCBS dies in the late 70's at a gun show, price is still on the box,... 5 bucks. Always keep two mags full of them just encase,...

 

[Gunfighter14e2]

Cases are made from cut down 308 brass. Now all I need to do is make some over shot wads and cut down some .410 wads, to load a few up.

The middle one is how it should look when ready to fire. Ream a 45* case to sharpness insert a nail threw the drilled out primer pocket and, cut your over pellet wads from a Styrofoam coffee cup. The powder wading is best from thick gasket material from a auto supply store and use a gasket punch to cut those. I do a years supply at a time on a arbor press.

 

[jmorris]

Loaded up a few, the wads were cut down to 11/16" and hard to get in on the first one. After that my brain started working and I used the wad guide off of one of my shotshell reloaders.

They hold 84.9+\- grains of #12 or around 425 pellets. Used 6 grains of 231 and over-shot wads punched from a 12ga hull.

Step by step.

They patterned tighter that my other pistol shot loads using Speer capsules, maybe because of the wad.?

15ft

Video link of them running.
VID_20140325_151407_117_zps82af9b35-1.mp4 Video by jmorrismetal | Photobucket