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Reloading the small primer winchester .45 brass


John Thompson

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Glad to hear of your results Brass Hog.....i sort a bunch of brass for resale and have been pulling the small primeredstuff out for obvious resons and i've been thinking about loading some for the matches where i don't get my brass back......i had decapped a piece of it and it looked like the primer may have been crimped in addition to be a small primer...but i haven't tried one yet......

With all the grief that winchester has been giving the shotgun shell reloaders lately you'd think they'd leave the pistol shooters alone....i'm beginning to think that they've got an engineer over there that stays up late at night tring to figure new ways to screw the reloading public with their brass and shotshell hulls.......

D I C K

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Worked fine for me though I too noticed the slight primer crimp. Some would load SPP fine, others would cause the primer to go in sideways. Loading on a 1050 would cure that (I use the XL650). One good thing about them: you are nearly assured that they are once-fired (since few of us bother to reload them).

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I have reloaded some of this with great results. Don't notice any difference.

Per a Win representative at a local show, the brass walls are thinner on the NT and won't stand up to more than 2 - 3 reloadings. The official Win comment is "Not for reloading."

/B

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It'll presumably depend on the loadings. For winter indoor 50 foot Bullseye I'm only loading 3.5 gn of BE or equivalent; I hope to see a longer life than 2 or 3 uses.

I've got about 200 so I'll start using them for practice and keep track to post later.

/B

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I was just given 500+ Winichester NT 45 ACP casses from one of the local police agencies. Loaded 50 up, so I will see how they work this afternoon. If they work as well as some of you guys say, then I just found a source for all of my "Lost Brass" matches. :D

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I have done a LITTLE loading with the Win .45 NT that is just starting to contaminate the brass pool around here.

The stuff I have picked up did not have enough primer crimp to affect the loading.

For the same powder, bullet, and seating, with SP primers; velocity has been less than with normal ACP cases and LP primers. By 24 to 46 fps in the four loads I shot.

So if you are loading to barely Major power factor, you need to make an adjustment. A change to SP magnum primers will gain back part or all of the velocity drop, depending on the load. Or you could just up the powder charge a little.

I think the Winchester rep was having Canuck on. I just weighed some brass. The NT empties with primer still in weighed right around 87 grains. So did some "Winchester" headstamp LP brass. Older "W-W" brass was about a grain lighter. If the NT has thinner walls it must have a thicker head. I haven't sectioned any to see. Since it is free and I won't use it for max loads I am not going to worry about durability.

I am color coding my .45 ACP. The small NT primer is nickel plated so I am loading with unplated Winchester LP. When I see a white primer, I look close to see if it is large or small. If large it is a range pickup and goes in the tumbler. If it is small it goes in a box to accumulate until I get enough to be worth fooling with.

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