by flintlok » Sun Mar 31, 2019 11:48 pm
Okay, I assemble the 32-20 load using small pistol primers and 7.0 grains of 2400 powder and the 310 Cadet RCBS 120 grain lead cast heeled bullets. The load is at the lower end of the recommended powder charge for a 120 grain bullet in the 32-20 that listed in the Lyman Reloading Manual 49th edition. I check my Cartridges of the World book by Frank Barnes and found that the Cadet factory load had a muzzle velocity of 1200 fps. My load should be around 1000 fps.
I used Lee's Liquid Alox for as a bullet lubricant. Typically I resize and lubricant all of my cast bullets with my own home made lube however, since the lower end of the bullet is heeled and of smaller diameter the the body of the bullet, I couldn't size the bullet without making a mess where I would have to wipe off excess lube from the heel. As result all of the bullets were loaded as cast and unsized.
I made about 600 cast bullets. I placed them evenly or so in two thick plastic freezer bags and added a somewhat shy of a tablespoon amount of the liquid Alox to each bag. I rolled the bags a bit in order to let the Alox evenly coat the heads and then place the bags opened outside to let the volatiles evaporate off. Fresh Alox lube smells and it's best left in the open air for several hours to reduce the odor. The lube dried from a wet greasy coating to a somewhat dry light tacky coating after 48 hours or so. That's when they are ready to load. I've never used this lube before and the jury is out as to how the load will or will not lead the bore. The lead that I used was a mixture of approximately 60% hard cast and 40% pure lead. I have loads of hard cast bullets that are poor performers. I always get better results with somewhat "soft" lead loads.
I should note that I used an RCBS 30 Caliber Carbine bullet seating die to load the cartridges. My RCBS 32-20 dies is better at seating flat nose bullets. The Carbine seating die was designed to seat long ogived round nose bullet very much like the RCBS 310 Cadet mould forms. It made the seating alignment worlds easier.
I have a Lee 32-20 factory crimp die. As is and using it as directed by Lee will not work without modification. The crimp die typically is use by inserting the case in the shell holder and rammed in the die compressing the crimping sleeve fixture at the bottom and pushing it upward along die's interior tapered body so that the crimp sleeve will close on and crimp the case neck. This method is set for a factory case length for the 32-20. As I noted before, an untrimmed 32-20 case is 1.315 inch long. I trimmed all of my cases to 1.140 inches.
In order to use the crimp die I dropped the loaded cartridges from the top of the die. I found that it was necessary to insert a spacer of 0.809 inch high to place on the shell holder to get the cartridge positioned where the crimp would close on and crimp the heeled area of the bullet. I made the spacer with a empty 32 ACP pistol case and I inserted and glued a threaded bolt in the case. It took some experimenting the find the correct spacer height. I had to center the cartridges by hand at the top of the crimp die. The shell holder usually does that otherwise it worked great. I now have 260 cartridges ready to shoot. Now, just to find time to get to the range. That's hard part of all of this.
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Flintlok, I think you're dead right....."The Dogge"
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