(Re)Forming .30-06 Brass

[M67]

I have a bit of a predicament. I was given .25-06 brass (just shy of 150 cases), that was formed from .30-06 brass, some military and some commercial. Well, I don't have a .25-06 but I do have the 30. You can find all over the web with the process of making .25-06 out of 270 and 30-06 but not the other way around. So I'm curious on ideas.

Using my Hornady dies, a 30 cal expander won't blow out a 25 cal. So would using a .27 or .28 expander first, then running them through the 30 work?

Another thought I had and suggestion I've been given, is to fire form them. 5 grains or so of Unique, fill the rest of the casing with cream of wheat, then top it off with cotton, and just shoot the wheat-y rounds to fire form them.

Or, would I be best in just trading the .25-06 cases for some 30-06? Would the stress on the neck be too much to go from .30 to .25 and then back to .30?

Suggestions?

 

[Broom_jm]

I have a bit of a predicament. I was given .25-06 brass (just shy of 150 cases), that was formed from .30-06 brass, some military and some commercial. Well, I don't have a .25-06 but I do have the 30. You can find all over the web with the process of making .25-06 out of 270 and 30-06 but not the other way around. So I'm curious on ideas.

Using my Hornady dies, a 30 cal expander won't blow out a 25 cal. So would using a .27 or .28 expander first, then running them through the 30 work?

Another thought I had and suggestion I've been given, is to fire form them. 5 grains or so of Unique, fill the rest of the casing with cream of wheat, then top it off with cotton, and just shoot the wheat-y rounds to fire form them.

Or, would I be best in just trading the .25-06 cases for some 30-06? Would the stress on the neck be too much to go from .30 to .25 and then back to .30?

Suggestions?

If they've been fired even once, after being squeezed down to 25-'06, don't bother trying to stretch 'em back out. Brass is ductile, but it ain't made out of elastic.

I don't get why folks want to reform '06 brass into its various off-spring. Unless you're talking one of the obscure, non-standardized rounds, there is plenty of virgin 25-'06 and 270 brass available.

 

[1$Chuck]

30-06 brass is way more prevalent than 25-06 and less expensive. I would sell it or trade it.. You should be able to end up with more cases than you started with that way.

 

[Onebad06vtx]

I have a bit of a predicament. I was given .25-06 brass (just shy of 150 cases), that was formed from .30-06 brass, some military and some commercial. Well, I don't have a .25-06 but I do have the 30. You can find all over the web with the process of making .25-06 out of 270 and 30-06 but not the other way around. So I'm curious on ideas.

Using my Hornady dies, a 30 cal expander won't blow out a 25 cal. So would using a .27 or .28 expander first, then running them through the 30 work?

Another thought I had and suggestion I've been given, is to fire form them. 5 grains or so of Unique, fill the rest of the casing with cream of wheat, then top it off with cotton, and just shoot the wheat-y rounds to fire form them.

Or, would I be best in just trading the .25-06 cases for some 30-06? Would the stress on the neck be too much to go from .30 to .25 and then back to .30?

Suggestions?

Where are you located in Indiana?
I would size them up for you.
I have a sinclar special sizing die and It would be a piece of cake to take them back up to 30 cal.
Or if you wanted to do it your self just size up to 27 cal then to 30 by using 270 win die then the 30 06.
Use a good case lube like rcbs or lee.

 

[Hank in Indiana]

Anneal the cases before and after you size. Then see how well they hold up. I resize 308 to 358 with no problems and they hold up very well.

 

[M67]

Or if you wanted to do it your self just size up to 27 cal then to 30 by using 270 win die then the 30 06.
Use a good case lube like rcbs or lee.

At one point in time, I had RCBS case lube, don't know where it is now. Just have One Shot (ehhh) at the moment. I have access to a 270 WSSM die, I could rob the expander from that and play around a little with it.

A little while ago, I knew someone who wanted to get in annealing because of his 30BR brass, I'm not sure if he ever went any further with that project.

I'm all for tying to blow them back out, if one or two get fubar well I'm not into them for anything so I'm good with that. Could always trade them but it's the .25 teasing me because it's so close to .30...

 

[Leo]

Personally, I would not fool with them. I would just get unmolested 30-06 and go on. I made 6.5 X '06 out of 30-06 and after necking it down, I needed to turn the necks down to get the proper neck thickness for bullet tensioning and chambering. If the cases you have were neck reamed or neck turned, they will be too thin when you stretch them back out.

If you are determined to stretch them back out, you need to beware of something. Un like the wives tale about "thicker" 5.56 military brass affecting loads, true U.S. GI 30-06 brass is thicker. You need to adjust the powder charge. Master PO's website as well as the the NRA website has proper loading data for.

 

[Broom_jm]

To put this in perspective, I just rep'd Leo for his post.

Necking UP brass, that was already necked DOWN, is basically flirting with disaster. Fifty thousandths (.050") is actually quite a bit of bending back and forth, for metal. When you're done, at best, you'll have '06 cases with a reduced life expectancy. As cheap and readily available as brass is for that round, why risk it? Once-fired '06 brass is going for somewhere around $25 per hundred, so you're saving yourself less than $50 by necking those back up. For the money you get to skip the dual resizing operations, skip the necessary annealing, and you wind up with brass with necks that are still in good shape for many future reloadings. If you do what Shibumseeker does, you can make a new friend by gifting him 150 pieces of 25-'06 brass! Seriously, that's your best move...either give it to someone with a 25-'06 or find someone to do a swap with you.

 

[M67]

If I do/can, blow them back up to .30, they're going to be shot through a Garand loaded for Garand loads (not ass kicking big game loads), plus with the cost of even reloaded .30-06, I'll only fire a couple hundred rounds a year through it, so the brass life once/if blown back out would actually last me years. I have close to 950 .308 cases that will probably last me the rest of my life just because it seems like I hardly shoot my 308 AR anymore.

I like high volume shooting, so for rifles just due to cost 5.56 and 7.62x39 are mainly what I shoot, and 5.56 more than the other just because I like ARs more than AKs/SKSs.

I won't have access to that .27 expander until tomorrow (if I can find it), so I'll be playing with it for a couple days. May try the cream of wheat method today if I get back home with some day light.

Oh, AFAIK, these have only been necked down to .25-06 but never fired in a .25-06 chamber.

That being said, there might be 140 .25-06 brass cases in the WTT section soon...

 

[M67]

Update

So, I actually managed to do it. I up necked some .25.06 to .30-06 from necked down .30-06.

I never did try the cream of wheat idea, busy and tired and no cream of wheat.

However, a friend did loan me his 30BR die with a tapered expander, using that and some Imperial Sizing Lube, I successfully resized a few casings. First I necked them up to .30 then I ran them through a RCBS small base resizing die (since my Hornady resizer has a broken alan wrench in the locking ring screw)



And loaded up 8 round to put a clip through the Garand this morning. 47gr of 4064 using a 175gr BTHP. None of the casings were stretched over max length and the necks had plenty of tension on the bullet. I put OAL at 3.3" on 7, 1 round (the first) I adjusted the die too quickly and seated it at aprox. 3.28".



So the function test. The cycled fine, brass ejected aprox. 1 oclock to 2:30, and none of the casing's necks had splits or damage. Aprox 2" groups at 50 yards, I was happy since I've yet to tinker with the sights or mess with loads, and this makes only the 20th or so rounds I've shot through it




I also found out that you can neck up an actual .25-06 piece of brass to .30-06 and it'll cycle fine. One did this once, by accident. Necked it up to .30 and was amazed to see a .25-06 head stamp.

So I was successful and it worked. The first 10 cases necked up fine, then I split 2 back to back, then another 3 fine, then 2 more split.

It can be done, but brass is valuable, and I'm sure someone can use .25-06 brass so looks like I'll be trading it for .30-06 so I don't have to worry about splitting necks

Learning experience

 

[Broom_jm]

Yeah, if you got 4 split cases out of 17, that's way too much of a failure rate. The cases that did not split with this resizing are likely to split much sooner than brass that did not go through two sizing operations.