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How much brass?

Vermin93

Vermin93

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I have a hypothetical question for this forum.

Say you that a few years ago you foolishly purchased a rifle in a novelty caliber that is basically already dead. Let's also say that factory ammo and brass for this caliber is only made by Hornady and is already becoming hard to find online. Say that you decide you want to keep this rifle because it looks good, it shoots great and you can't sell it for much because nobody wants to get stuck with a rifle in this caliber. So, you go purchase a set of dies to start reloading this caliber.

Let's say that you shoot this rifle about 50 times a year. If you already had 100 pieces of brass from once-fired factory ammo, how much more new brass would you want to buy to have a "lifetime supply". For this particular caliber, 50 pieces of brass is about $35.
 
First of all, there's no such thing as "foolishly purchasing a rifle," especially one that looks good and shoot great.
I guess my answer depends specifically on the caliber -- does this "novelty caliber" have a parent cartridge that can be resized? If so then your 100 pieces of brass may do it for you.
Otherwise I find I get 8-10 on average from Winchester brass, with a non-magnum, mid-range load.

So figure 50 shots x 30(?) years / 9 reloads gives you about 170 pieces of brass. Since you already have 100, another 100 new should set you for life (literally).
 
I'd go with DA and say 500 for a "lifetime" supply. I'd also start either neck sizing or partial FL sizing to keep from working the brass so much.
 
Rubberduck270 said:
I'd go with DA and say 500 for a "lifetime" supply. I'd also start either neck sizing or partial FL sizing to keep from working the brass so much.
Click to expand...

What equipment is required to do that? I am new to reloading and I just bought the regular RCBS 2-die set.
 
what is the caliber?? if it can be made from something else I wouldnt worry about it,,

if you take care of your brass and the headspace is good your brass will last a long time,,
 
You can buy just a neck sizing die to only resize the neck or adjust the FL die you already have to only bump the shoulder back a couple thousanths and not completely resize the body.
 
Ok,

From what I am able to gather from published info. online, which is not much to say the least. This cartridge is pretty much a stand alone, other than it being stated it is a shortened .308 case.
I did find this article about reloading ammo for it, but even that doesn't sound promising in performance.

http://www.chuckhawks.com/30_t-c_first_look.htm

If you can find brass, buy it (That is if you intend to keep the gun). But, this particular round doesn't seem to have caught on as intended by T/C or Hornady's expectations. Make note about the special formulated powder that is not avail. to the public yet or maybe never to achieve full potential.

FDXX75
 
you would need to lube the 308 case well and run it through the 30TC full length size die and trim to length,,load and shoot,

from the dimensions it looks to me to be the same as a 300 Savage
 
FULLDRAWXX75 said:
If you can find brass, buy it (That is if you intend to keep the gun). But, this particular round doesn't seem to have caught on as intended by T/C or Hornady's expectations. Make note about the special formulated powder that is not avail. to the public yet or maybe never to achieve full potential.

FDXX75
Click to expand...

Yep, the 30 TC was pretty much an epic failure. It has already crashed and burned in less than 8 years. TC also killed their ICON rifle, which is the rifle they used to introduce the 30 TC.

30 TC factory ammo uses the Hornday Superformance powder that they use in their Superformance ammo. Hornady didn't make Superformance powder available for sale to the public initially, but they are selling it now. That's the only reason I'm planning to reload the 30 TC.

I found a site with 200 rounds of 30 TC brass for a good price, so I'm going to snatch it up and start reloading.
 
The 200 rounds/cases you are buying is what I like to start with when buying any rifle in a cartridge I don't already load for. If this rifle is to be a deer rifle, that's probably more than you will ever need. But "More" is way better than running out especially when you are talking about a cartridge like this that never got a foothold commercially so that there are no surpluses available anywhere to turn too years from now if you did run out.

Regarding forming the cases from something else, I was just looking at HuntingtonDies.com which pardners with RCBS as a great source for Form Dies and they don't list the 30 TC.

http://www.huntingtons.com/ref_rcbs_caseform.pdf
https://www.huntingtons.com/store/home.php?cat=581

Mr. Big may very well be right that you can just lube a 308 Winchester case and run it through a 30 TC full length sizer die. It won't cost anything to try. Well, except possibly a stuck case. :) (I've done that before and it can be removed regardless of what you may think when the rim of the case pulls off leaving a ragged mess inside your sizer die.)

Back to the original question about how many cases make up a lifetime Buy. When I bought a 22 CHeetah Mark I back in 1988, the small primer 308 cases, that were the parent case, were already out-of-production. I responded by grabbing up 900 of them the 1st chance I got. I've never regrettted it.

As a final statement, there are very few guns that can't be loaded for if you have enough desire to do so. There's a lot of options and most any case can be formed from something else but as you see from the links I gave above, a set of Form Dies can be painful to pay for at $400 but at least that option is often available. I recall how painful it was to let go of the $180 for the Form Die set for the 22 CHeetah back in 1988 when you could almost buy a rifle for what I paid for those dies - and then I still had to buy a set of Loading Dies on top of that. And I bet Huntington would even make up a set not on their list if you wanted to pay the tooling cost.
 

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