While on the subject of case necking

[MaDuce]

I'm looking in to the possibility of designing and making my own handgun cartridge which involves a pretty steep case necking of an existing case. But I know nothing about the process of physically doing it.

Anyone here familiar with the process and willing to educate me?

[survivalshop]

Forming dies . Some are multi step dies to get  the case where you want it or designed to be .

Are you a hand loader ? Most major die & custom die manufacturers will make pretty much any die you want & can come up with spec's for.

Take the 300BLK cartridge , you cut a case down & use a forming /sizing die to make the finished case. It is a simple process.

[Jgun]

Disregarding the final performace of some wildcat that you come up with, there is the expense of the custom forming dies to take into account. The more severe the forming operation, the more dies that will be needed to get it down to the desired neck size, in addition to the fact that you'll need to anneal the cases in order to do the drastic forming operation without them work hardening and cracking. Your also going to need to have a chamber reamer made (more expense). Once you go to all that trouble, you'll find yourself being very careful not to ever lose any of your one of a kind brass, which can be a PITA all by itself, unless your going to chamber it in a revolver.

I was looking into duplicating the .224 BOZ cartridge, and found that the dies and chamber reamer were going to run me close to $500.

If Your serious about developing a wildcat I recommend that you get yourself a copy of Ken Howells book, "Designing and forming Custom cartridges for rifles and handguns". I consider this book to be the definitive work on the subject.

[MaDuce]

Thanks. I'll look in to it. I'm looking at a .45 Win Mag bottlenecked down to a .32.