Bee, 25-20, .32-20 brass blues

[Antietamgw]

I noticed Colo Native was hunting Bee brass on the FS forum. I thought about tossing in my thoughts there but it would just clutter his thread. Good luck to you in your search!

I have a bit of experience with these calibers - the Bee in a Martini, the 25 and 32-20 in Savage M/23's. I'm particular about taking care of my brass but especially so in these calibers. BTW, neck sizing, mild loads and annealing the necks every 5 loadings has really extended brass life, especially in the Bee. I have some experience in reforming various cases. I use both Imperial Sizing Die Wax and CFL case forming lube. My experience with 218 Bee has been buy it when you can find it. If you have to form it try to start with new Win 25-20 brass. I've not had good luck getting .32-20 down to .22 with less than 50% loss. I recently got 400 Starline .32-20 hoping to use most to form to 22 and 25 caliber. It's fantastic stuff in .32 - thicker and tougher than Win or RP but doesn't lend itself to reforming very well. If annealed first you can get to .25 cal without losing too many, heavy losses going to .22. Maybe if it were trimmed slightly first, losses would be a bit less but it's already a little shorter than prefered for .25-20. Seems that if the case mouth is not perfectly smooth and chamfered without chatter, a slight crease will begin to form when necking down. Once it starts, even just very slightly, you're done - taper expand it back to .32 and use it for plinking or hunting loads. Annealing first helped but I still had probably 15% loss so I quit. Maybe taking it down from 32 to 28 and then 25 would be better but I'd need to make a die to do that. I'm going to give that a try but am too busy right now to make up the die. I got 50 reformed .25-20 cases but looking at the 19 bad ones in the scrap brass box made it a hollow victory. Win 32-20 can go to .25 without any real trouble, anneal first if it's been fired, just be gentle if it's new. I needed .25-20's so I decided to see how my many times fired (mostly with 3.2 Bullseye and a 98 gr. Keith SWC) Win .32-20 brass would behave if reformed. I annealed and then formed 10 Win 32-20 to 25-20 last weekend, shot and fired each 5 times with my standard mild cast load. They held up fine - no losses in forming and looked fine after firing. I'll reform the rest soon and anneal the ones I fired 5 times before reloading. That takes care of the .25-20 problem for awhile but doesn't help the Bee situation at all. I don't mind jumping though these little hoops (I kind of enjoy reforming brass) but it really hurts to lose brass that is hard to find, expensive for it's size and almost never found laying around the range. I'd like to make up a set of dies to get Starline .32 brass down to .22, taking it down maybe .015 at a time. It's tough stuff and I believe it would hold up well if you finally got it formed properly. It will go on the (long) rainy day list I guess. I have 100 new Win 25-20 cases squirreled away but don't want to use them unless 218 Bee brass is unavailable at any price. All brass of this head size seems pretty well unavailable right now and those that have it are awful proud of it. I shoot these Savage M/23's alot and really enjoy them but brass has always been a PITA. If I ever run out and can't get any more, these will get rechambered to 256 Win and 30-357. If anyone else has had some success in forming these I'd sure appreciate any tips or comments!

[SmokeEater2]

I emailed Winchester a few weeks ago and they replied that they would be making runs of these calibers just as soon as they could get caught up with what they said was enormous demand.