[looper]

I am new to reloading for the 45-70 but am not new to reloading. I want to know if the BB brass is alot stronger than other brands and how does it compare in water volume with other brands of brass.Ihave 100 empty cases and want to start filling them.

 

[Ridgerunner665]

Best advice I can offer is to measure their water volume yourself...not many people have reloaded that brass.

 

[looper]

thanks for the reply. I thought somone may have as Ihave read other posts that had water volumes for different brass.

 

[savageak]

not positive but think i read that they use sterline brass

 

[eaglesnest]

Also the primers are small rifle, and that to me poses a bit of a dilemma when working up loads with published data. I don't know, maybe someone with more experience could speak to that, is it a problem? Do you use magnum primers? ???

 

[Cody WY]

I found a box of Buffalo Bore 44mag last hunting season laying on the trail they were all loaded with starline brass. I don’t know if BB uses starline in every thing.

 

[eaglesnest]

I don't have them here but if memory serves my BB 405's say something like 45/70 Magnum. I have heard that they contracted with Starline to make their brass using small rifle primer pockets to make mad tube detonations less possible under high recoil. I wonder if the brass is any stouter than regular brass too. ???

 

[findrichard]

Looking at my BB 300 JFN they read "Lever Gun 45-70 Mag" and the primer looks smaller than the Hornady LE primer. I don't think they would make their own brass. I would suspect they contract from one of the brass manufactures, but that is just a guess.

 

[Ridgerunner665]

It is rumored to be Starline brass...and it probably is.

Use the brass, but work up the loads from the beginning.

 

[jaycocreek]

No rumor...Starline makes the brass for Buffalo Bore(special order) and at one time,Randy Garrett even used it.

Randy Garrett Wrote:

I checked in with the forum and noticed that there was some confusion about who offers small rifle primers in their 45-70 ammo. A while back we did, for a short time, offer all of our 45-70 loads with small primers. This was in response to concerns that were generated by three magazine ignitions that occurred with a competitors ammo. However, we had never experience such an event, and the guys at Marlin (Harold Waterman) told me that they had only seen three such occurrences in Marlin 45-70s, and they all occurred with the same competitor's ammo. So I found myself a bit "on the fence" regarding this issue, especially since I have chosen to offer extra wide meplats on my Hammerheads (which helps protect against the dreaded event). Subsequent to that, I did discover one cold morning (not all that cold, just 32 degrees) that when my Hammerheads were ignited by small primers that I would experience very well defined vertical stringing. I had never seen such a perfect example of it either, as my groups were one inch from left to right, but were six inches from top to bottom! This is the classic symptom of underignition. I then tried the same load, except for the use of a large primer, and the group size immediately shrunk to its normal 1-1.5" group. I then repeated this exercise several times, and each time I observed the same difference between the small and large primer performance.

After that I was convinced that small rifle primers have no place in the 45-70, since the conditions were not all that cold, certainly not as cold as one would expect in the far north. Given that, I had to conclude that if a customer were to fire on game in really cold weather, that the underignition of the small primer could cause real trouble, perhaps even a misfire. At that point I switched to the CCI34 Military Spec large rifle primer, which is a magnum primer. With it, I have not been able to produce anything like the vertical stringing I observed with the small rifle primer (CCI43).

Jayco

 

[eaglesnest]

No rumor...Starline makes the brass for Buffalo Bore(special order) and at one time,Randy Garrett even used it.

Randy Garrett Wrote:

Jayco

Well that is pretty interesting about the small rifle primers. I have heard, (but not experienced) that magazine tube detonations are not all they are cracked up to be, because the cartridges are not in chambers the sudden case expansion from one going off in the tube rapidly relieves pressure and doesn't necessarily even set the others off and the result is just a bunch of burnt powder to clean up. Buffalo Bore must have thought otherwise to go through the trouble of making completely new cases.

 

[Brian in FL]

Well that is pretty interesting about the small rifle primers. I have heard, (but not experienced) that magazine tube detonations are not all they are cracked up to be, because the cartridges are not in chambers the sudden case expansion from one going off in the tube rapidly relieves pressure and doesn't necessarily even set the others off and the result is just a bunch of burnt powder to clean up. Buffalo Bore must have thought otherwise to go through the trouble of making completely new cases.

Thanks for your post. I have been referring, quite a few times, to an article in the 2002 Gun Digest that pretty much proves that the issue of magazine detonation from contact of the bullet nose of one cartridge with the primer of the cartridge ahead of it causing the magazine of the rifle to burst is simply a myth.

 

[Ridgerunner665]

+1...Thanks for posting that Jayco.

I'd read it before...somewhere , but couldn't find it the other day.

 

[findrichard]

Just my luck, almost all my saved up brass is Hornady LE (too short) and Buffalo Bore (small primer hole). Can the primer hole be bored out to accept standard size primers?

 

[Rowdy]

Just my luck, almost all my saved up brass is Hornady LE (too short) and Buffalo Bore (small primer hole). Can the primer hole be bored out to accept standard size primers?

I would not go and open up the primer pockets
Are you interested in a trade for your 45/70 BB brass??
I have some once fired 45/70 Starline to trade.

 

[jaycocreek]

Jayco

 

[findrichard]

Rowdy,
I might be interested in trading if this brass is going to be a problem for me. I haven't started reloading yet but I want to try and replicate BB 300 grain loads so that I can use reloads for practice and BB rounds for hunting until I get confidence in my own loads. Do you know if H4198 will perform well with small rifle primers?

 

[Rowdy]

findrichard – I’ve never used H4198 with a SR primer. It’s a fast burn rifle powder, lights easy enough.

I use Rem 7 1/2 BR primers in my 22 CHeetah MKI… The brass is Remington 308 BR w/ Small primer pockets, and they light very large charges of H4350 (a medium burn) rifle powder just fine…I’ve shot them at 100F down to 10F and never had any ignition problems…

Good pic jayco it show the alignment in the tube. The brass in the pic, are those large primer pockets?

 

[looper]

Thanks for all the feedback, When using this brass I will work up loads using std. and mag. primers and see what I come up with. The stringing effect has my attention as I live in Colo. We should have some more days below 32 de. to test this.