Well, this isn't what I did today but perhaps it will be a mild interest to someone anyway. It does pertain to doing something in the loading room, well, sorta.
A month or so ago, my grandson and I finally culminated a dream of mine from the late 60s. The dream was initiated by an article in HANDLOADER Magazine about the 17 caliber cartridges.
We built a 17/224 Weatherby. Yeah, I know, the 17 REM is already over bore and using a bigger case just exacerbates the situation but what the heck. We could, so we did.
I had purchased the reamer in the late 80s but, as often happens, life intervened and it lay in my toolbox with the big "someday" sign on it. Since the grandson is a huge 17 caliber fan also, we got the stuff together, altered a REM 700 bolt face, installed a SAKO extractor, profiled the barrel then fit and chambered it.
Now for the "fun" part in the loading room. We made a couple of step-down dies, 20 cal. and then 17 cal. We had hells own time with the 17-cal. step. Collapsed a couple of case for some reason. (VERY SPENDY at $3.00+ a case) The only thing I can think of, is that because of the radius shoulder, there is not the rigidity to support the neck at the junction of the neck and shoulder like there is with a conventional shoulder/neck angle. Years ago, when brass was hard to come by for my 17 REM, I made a lot of cases from 223 with virtually no case loss and I didn't even have to anneal the necks, which we did on the 224 Cases.
So, we finally got it more or less sorted out to the point we could load a couple of cases and test fire. For load data we went to Ackley's book and extrapolated data using Ackley's 17 Flintstone Eyebunger. We weighed an empty case of 22-250, the parent of the Eyebunger, and then a 224 Wea. case. We filled each case with water and weighed again to determine the percentage difference in case capacity. Using that number we reduced the Eyebunger load by that percentage difference and then reduced it another 5% for a "starting" load.
Fireformed BEAUTIFULLY! A case is at Manson Reamers as I type, to have an FL size die reamer made. Believe it or not, it is way cheaper to go that route than to have a custom set of dies made.
He being deployed to Korea shortly, so the project is on hold till he gets back, at which time things should get interesting.
If anyone cares about the results of this project, I can post a follow-up when we get everything worked out. However, since there is the deployment factor, it will be a while.
