338 Edge brass from RWS 404 Jeffery parent case

[Pdvdh]

Dave,

Here's your photo.

 

[Broz]

utt ohhh , Here comed some new found velocity for the edge... gun)

 

[MagMan]

Just curious, what is the weight of the finished product?

 

[davewilson]

i asked Paul to post this picture for me because several people asked me about my progress to make edge brass from 404 Jeffery's. i finally got around to it and the results are very encuraging. the picture shows an unaltered 404 on the left, a sized to 338 in the middle and fire formed on the right. the advise i received from Bruce Baer was to only size no more than about .030 at a time and i wouldn't have any problems. the OD of the 404 is about .445, so i went to .410, then .380 and then ran it in my FL 338/300 die which has a .362 neck. that's what it looked like in the middle picture. next i anealed the shoulder/neck area, loaded it and went bang. my initial concern was the OAL of the case itself. the RWS was only 2.833 and the trim length of the edge is 2.850. after sizing, it was 2.852 and it stayed this length after fire forming. this is great! neck thickness is a bit less than Remington. after sizing it's about .014 thick. the rim is a little bigger than a standard magnum, about .538 as compared to .532. i have no problem with it going on my 700 bolt. the base of the Jeffery's is a bit less, about .538 and the fireformed from my chamber is .548. so there's a little bulge on one side which i put in the BFD catagory.

All in all, i'm very pleased with the results. i now have RWS quality brass in my edge, or soon to be both of my Edge's!

Many thanks goes to Paul for not only posting this, but giving me advise as he has basically done this before.

 

[davewilson]

weight of the RWS brass is about 287 and the Rem is 270.

i put powder in one of each, both were fireformed, unsized.

RWS held 114 gr of RL22 and the Rem held 112. again this was just i pc of each with me just holding my finger over the end to get an answer for the next question.

 

[Dano1]

Wow,

This definately is an interesting post for me. It sure is nice to see you guys looking for answers to brass quality issues.

I had to do a similar thing for my .243 AI. (I was splitting Shoulder in virgin R-P and Win brass.) I couldn't afford Lapua or Norma Brass, so I decided to make my brass out of .308 Lake City Match brass. Necking down in steps, turning necks and fireforming and weight sorting. Turned out to work beautifully. They handle higher pressures too.

Dan

 

[Shawn Carlock]

Dave,

Are you seeing a velocity increase? Is there any accuracy difference? If there is, is it worth firefroming for?

 

[Broz]

I know this is not apples to apples here, but may be relevant as far as velocity is concerned. We just got a hold of some Lapua brass for our 300 win. For the first range session we backed the charge of H-1000 off 1 1/2 grains. The Lapua Brass with 1 1/2 gr less gave the same velocity as the WW brass. tested back to back.

It will be interesting to see what you see from the beefy RWS brass in terms of velocity. Also the posibility of being able to up the charge.

Jeff

 

[davewilson]

Shawn, i only have one case made. wanted to see if it could be done first. i'm gonna take one piece of Rem and one RWS, load the same amount of powder and walk them up 1 gr at a time just to see if there's any advantage in velocity. the main reason i did it was so i could get a batch of brass and use them till the barrel wore out, and maybe the next barrel. plus it's kinda fun to experiment. planning on doing this Thursday.

 

[Wild_Bill]

Hi you have made a 338 Canadian Magnum people have been making 7mm, 30cal 338, and 375 improved cartridges based on the 404 case check Bruce Baer and Barney Lawton their 30 cals also the 30-404 improved is used by msny for heavy 1000 yard guns and in 338 and 308 for 1 mile benchrest.

I know a lot tnat used to use 30-404's now they use 300 ultramag's as the performance with accuracy andvelocity is almost identical the cost of 100rws allows you to bey 500 rem cases.

Have fun playing.

Cheers Bill
Australia

 

[Pdvdh]

The difference between the Remy brass and RWS brass is the RWS brass will handle higher pressures without swelling the primer pockets. I got substantially higher muzzle velocity with my 338 Imperial (which falls midway between the 338 RUM and 338 Edge) in a 27" Hart barrel than I was able to achieve with a 338-378 Weatherby Magnum using a 30" Lilja barrel. The Weatherby brass was good for about two shots before I lost the primer pockets - very soft. Admitedly, I will at times push my handloads pretty hard.

In my experience, the RWS 404 Jeffery brass was the toughest brass commercially available. And RWS ceased manufacture of 404 Jeffery brass about 10 years ago, so at this point it's expensive and scarcer than hen's teeth.

I expect Dave to tell us he can push the RWS brass to notably higher velocity than the Remington brass. But we'll have to wait for that confirmation.

 

[davewilson]

The bottom line is i didn't see much difference between the Rem and RWS as far as speed goes. had a sticky bolt only one gr apart. this is with just one piece of brass for each Mfr. main difference is the primer pockets. after getting a sticky bolt, which in my gun is 99gr of h1000 with 250 gr bullets, i proceeded to shoot each at that amount of powder.after the second shot with Rem and a sticky bolt, i wasn't sure the primer was going to stay in the brass when i seated it with the hand primer, i couldn't feel any resistance at all when seating. this was only after 3 firings on that case. the RWS was quite a bit different. i fired it 5 times with 99gr and 3 more with 100 and there's more resistance putting a primer in it than the Rem had when new.

see you all in a week or so, some bastard is paying my way to go fishing for a week in the Florida Keys. a little different than the last vacation when i slept in a tent a tad below zero!

 

[Pdvdh]

Dave,

Were you chronographing velocities? And if so, wouldn't the RWS brass outlive the Rem brass even at significantly higher pressure loads?

My experience with the RWS brass is driving the bullets using higher pressures to higher velocity, while still maintaining case life. I could probably have matched velocity with the Wthby brass for a single shot, but it would have been toast after that first shot.

You seem to be describing a similar experience, but it's hard to tell from your post. If you load the Rem brass down to get 6 firings, what would your muzzle velocity be compared to what you could obtain using the RWS brass driven to higher pressures - yet still allowing 6 or more RWS case firings?

Enjoy your fishing trip.

 

[Wild_Bill]

If you are getting 2 shots from rem and six fromRWS you actualy waste one fireforming and ad the cost of fireforming the 404 cases the form dies the time to form the cases you could buy new rem cases load them once then bin them and still be infront in cost the extra pressure youbrun in a rws case will also bburn the barrel faster and if you get 50fps my belief is it is not cost effective and why people have ditched the 30-404 for a 300 ultramag get nosler or fed brass if you don't like Rem.

if you need more go use an improved edge or step up to a 338-408 based case.

then brass is actualy worse than rem ultramag cases.

Cheers Bill
Australia