There's always a lot of talk about the poor quality of Hornady brass and how that's going to limit the performance or viability of some of the new case designs that Hornady has been marketing lately (6.5 PRC, 300 PRC). I've personally never had an issue with Hornady brass, specifically the 375 Ruger case. I've been shooting a 375 Ruger for around 10 years and I've had excellent results with the Hornady brass. I've also used the 375 Ruger case to form 338/375 Ruger cases (also called the 338 Campfire and a couple other names) in a couple of different guns. The one I've spent the most time with is an 18" barreled specialty pistol that I've got around 1200 rounds through at this point. Combine this with roughly 700 rounds through the other 338/375 Ruger's I've had as well as roughly 900 rounds through the 375 Ruger and I feel like I've had a pretty fair amount of first hand experience with the Hornady brass, at least as it pertains to the 375 Ruger parent case. Over the years, across multiple guns I've come to expect an average of 7 firings per case before the primer pockets are what I consider too loose to continue to load. This is with what I consider to be full power loads in every gun. I don't make a habit of running anything at redline pressures but I do take full advantage of the case capacity that I've got to work with.
A while back I was looking for a parent case for an idea I had for a magnum class 270 to shoot some of the new 170gr bullets available. The idea for this (and all my other wildcats) was readily available brass and a design that would work using readily available dies to save guys the cost of custom dies if they were working on a budget. The 375 Ruger case is was my first pick but going from 375 down to 277 takes a lot of time and creates very thick necks. The next case that popped into my head was the 8x68s which is the parent case for the 30 Booboo. The 8x68s case is made by both Norma and RWS so there's excellent brass available but its pretty expensive. The rim and head diameter of the 8x68s case are both smaller than the Ruger case but still close enough to work with the right extractor and a fireformed case. This means that you can form 375 Ruger based cases from fireformed 8x68s or 6.5x68 cases with little trouble. This give the option of a higher quality case for folks who want to have round based off of the 375 Ruger parent case.
With all that out of the way, I thought I'd go through and document some of my progress in forming and testing 8x68s brass into cases for both the 338/375 Ruger and the 270 Boondoggle that I'm going to start working on. To get started, here's a side by side picture of a sectioned RWS 8x68s case on the left and a Hornady 375 Ruger case on the right. any distortion in the cases was caused by the vise I held them in while splitting them in half.
I know that there are a couple other folks on here who've done this, so if you guys want to chime in with any info you have please do! I'll work on getting some more pics and measurements in the next couple of days.
A while back I was looking for a parent case for an idea I had for a magnum class 270 to shoot some of the new 170gr bullets available. The idea for this (and all my other wildcats) was readily available brass and a design that would work using readily available dies to save guys the cost of custom dies if they were working on a budget. The 375 Ruger case is was my first pick but going from 375 down to 277 takes a lot of time and creates very thick necks. The next case that popped into my head was the 8x68s which is the parent case for the 30 Booboo. The 8x68s case is made by both Norma and RWS so there's excellent brass available but its pretty expensive. The rim and head diameter of the 8x68s case are both smaller than the Ruger case but still close enough to work with the right extractor and a fireformed case. This means that you can form 375 Ruger based cases from fireformed 8x68s or 6.5x68 cases with little trouble. This give the option of a higher quality case for folks who want to have round based off of the 375 Ruger parent case.
With all that out of the way, I thought I'd go through and document some of my progress in forming and testing 8x68s brass into cases for both the 338/375 Ruger and the 270 Boondoggle that I'm going to start working on. To get started, here's a side by side picture of a sectioned RWS 8x68s case on the left and a Hornady 375 Ruger case on the right. any distortion in the cases was caused by the vise I held them in while splitting them in half.
I know that there are a couple other folks on here who've done this, so if you guys want to chime in with any info you have please do! I'll work on getting some more pics and measurements in the next couple of days.
