A friend of mine bought a Westley Richards made .425WR with a drop box magazine for a pretty reasonable price but was put off by the high cost of Bertram brass. I told him I could make them from .375RUM cases so he bought me a 100 of them and I proceeded from there. It wasn't too difficult to grind a tool bit to approximate (Ididn't get the relief angle perfect) the .425 extractor groove and rim size. When I first tried to turn the rim using my three jaw chuck, it just pulled the case out of the chuck, cutting an elongated groove in the case. Back to the drawing board. I took a piece of 3/8" wood dowell and turned the end down to the primer pocket dimension, just enough so that it fit in the primer pocket and the case butted flusj=h against the major diameter of the dowel. I put this in the tail stock, chucked anothercase and brought the dowel up to the primer pocket and locked the tail stock. Being careful to not turn the rims to far, I wturned, measured, turned and measured until I got it right and noted the indication on my crossfeed dial. From there it was just a matter of repeating each step. I think they came out resonably well and my friend is quite pleased at the cost saving, 100 converted cases for $55 verses $65 per 20 for Bertram brass. I hope this picture turns out OK. On the left is a.375RUM converted to .404 Jeffrey (1 m/m short), a .425 from RUM Woodleigh 410 FMJ, an original Kynoch .425, a converted .425 410gr Barnes Original and I just had to throw in my 9.3 X 62.
http://photobucket.com/albums/e314/masterifleman/Reload...ow=paused&interval=3

Well, that didn't work too well but, if you click on the thread, it should take you to the photo.

Excellent work, and thanks for posting this...


you make a forming tool for this?

jeffe

I made a tool from a 1/4" HS Tool blank and ground it to form. The cutting was done by eyeball but the tool lines up using the inside face of the extractor groove on the case and the corresponding point on the tool to begin the cut. I'll know how "excellent" the work was when my friend "torches off" the first couple of rounds. I did section one of my screwups and it appears to have plenty of brass after turning the groove in it.

Good information and nice job!

I don't see any turning marks on the head. Did you lap the chamber? I switched over from .425WR cases and opened up the bolt face and extracter because the available brass in in .425 was too soft. The Ultra brass head diameter was just too large. roger

Bartsche - The RUM case is just the right diameter in the body next to the rim and about .200" too long. I turned the rims on the RUM brass to .470" to duplicate the 425 rim. I then necked them in one pass in a .404 Jeffrey die and then sized them full length in a 425 WR die and trimmed them to length. There isn't any dimension on my reformed cases that's more than .003" from an original Kynoch case. I can't foresee there being any problems chambering and firing these cases in an original .425 Westley Richards and the Remington brass is probably harder than either Federal of Winchester, I don't know about the Bertram brass. My only experience with Bertram was with basic .30-30 brass and half of them wouldn't fit in a standard .30-30 shell holder. That and the fact that the Bertram 425 brass was $65 per 20 made me attempt this project (cheap, you know).

quote:

Originally posted by Masterifleman:
Bartsche - The RUM case is just the right diameter in the body next to the rim

The bases Diameter of the .375 RUM That I work with measure .546" the .425WR. HDS measure .543"; Not much I'll grant but enough to give me fits when I resize and enough to give me a slight interference fit when chambering. This is on my wildcat 8mm X .425WR X2.5". My own reamer. I probably could have been a little more forgiving when I had the reamer ground. The Bell and Norma .404 cases were perfect. roger