Fire forming options

[Tac-O]

I've done the COW route. I found coffee worked better. COW tends to burn and cake up in the shoulder and had to be cleaned out with a right angle pick. Coffee is already burnt and somewhat better and easier to clean. Smells better too
I would also recommend cleaning every 10 rounds to keep crud out of the neck area. IME

Another alternative to COW is cornmeal. It doesn't seemto cake up or burn in barrel (I have used cornmeal on 500+ fire-formed cases thus far). Any fast-burning pistol or shotgun powder will do the trick.

I like these ideas but wonder about the abrasiveness of them compared to cow. Surely it's still less abrasive than a copper bullet.

I would think trail boss would work since you can just fill a case and stick a lightweight bullet in for reduced loads with no worries. But, cleaning that powder out of a bore is a real bear in my experience. I used it for 10 rounds with Tubbs bullets once and it was a chore just cleaning up from those 10

 

[just_jon]

I do all my fire forming with Alliant Green Dot shotgun powder. I use the cheapest bullet I can find seated into the lands on top of a charge equal to 1/3 of a normal load for the parent cartridge. For the 284 Win, that would be somewhere around 15-17 grains.

 

[Taylorbok]

I dont use full pressure loads to FF brass even new brass that just needs 1x fired I dont because I have found the web tends to expand more unless I back off about 1.5 the first FF load. How do you know what a full power load will be anyway on your 30-284 unless you've had one before.
Here's how I do it whether right or wrong but its worked well. Run atleast .003 neck tension maybe .004 jam the bullet .010-.015 into the lands and fire away.
Try a load just under max for a .284, with heavier bullet and see if they come out with a fairly sharp shoulder if not increase .5 at a time untill you do.
You need to get rounds down the barrel anyway to get through speed up and to settle down will probably take enough to quite a few brass formed, you can save some to FG for foulers also.
You can try a few different powders also will give you an idea what powder your barrel prefers.

This will be my first wildcat so forgive my ignorance. I planned on jamming the bullet, but the first thing I was going to do was a powder test and then pick a low node, load them all up and shoot. which is what I would normally do with a fresh barrel and I've never had case web issues. Am I OK to continue with that plan or should I just pick a mild load and shoot them all once first

 

[Beluebow]

I dont use full pressure loads to FF brass even new brass that just needs 1x fired I dont because I have found the web tends to expand more unless I back off about 1.5 the first FF load. How do you know what a full power load will be anyway on your 30-284 unless you've had one before.
Here's how I do it whether right or wrong but its worked well. Run atleast .003 neck tension maybe .004 jam the bullet .010-.015 into the lands and fire away.
Try a load just under max for a .284, with heavier bullet and see if they come out with a fairly sharp shoulder if not increase .5 at a time untill you do.
You need to get rounds down the barrel anyway to get through speed up and to settle down will probably take enough to quite a few brass formed, you can save some to FG for foulers also.
You can try a few different powders also will give you an idea what powder your barrel prefers.

This^^^

I have FF'd a gazillion pieces of brass from 284 to 284 Shehane and this is the method I prefer to use. Granted I'm not moving as much brass as you will be, but it makes no sense in hitting the primer pockets hard the first firing IMO. I typically go FF at a match, if that isn't an option, FF'ing on critters is fun as well. Or just plinking at the range.

 

[Tac-O]

This will be my first wildcat so forgive my ignorance. I planned on jamming the bullet, but the first thing I was going to do was a powder test and then pick a low node, load them all up and shoot. which is what I would normally do with a fresh barrel and I've never had case web issues. Am I OK to continue with that plan or should I just pick a mild load and shoot them all once first

Looking at your print, you shouldn't have to load with a bullet jammed in the lands. You should get a slight crush fit with your brass head spacing off the neck/shoulder. That's also how my reamer is designed.

The other thing I've seen mentioned from Alex wheeler and a few others many times is that you should use the same charge weight on the first fire forming to get the same case growth on all of them. The high charge is likely to change the brass OAL more than the low charge, this ending with different volume cases. I guess that might only be a concern if you're going for extreme brass consistency in BR applications.

 

[Tac-O]

I will likely do a forming session of 25 with cheap bullets and then reload those with good bullets until they're toast. In each of the sessions with the good bullets and 25 formed cases, I'll take 4-5 unformed ones with me loaded with cheap bullets to get those out of the way and eventually I'll have them all formed without going to the range specifically for it except for once.

 

[Seabeeken]

I like these ideas but wonder about the abrasiveness of them compared to cow. Surely it's still less abrasive than a copper bullet.

I would think trail boss would work since you can just fill a case and stick a lightweight bullet in for reduced loads with no worries. But, cleaning that powder out of a bore is a real bear in my experience. I used it for 10 rounds with Tubbs bullets once and it was a chore just cleaning up from those 10

The worst it could do is polish the bore. The flame of the powder will do more damage than coffee or corn

 

[L.Sherm]

The worst it could do is polish the bore.

Thats the worst thing you could do.

 

[Seabeeken]

Thats the worst thing you could do.

Ive heard that but its never hurt my rifles. I get barely a copper haze with HH bullets after 50 rounds in a number of rifles

 

[L.Sherm]

Trust me, you get a bore to polished it will turn into a Copper mine

 

[SSgt G Cody]

I still have half a keg of International and a big jar of grits that has served me well in fire-forming brass in the past! The scarce thing is bullets and primers!

 

[Taylorbok]

I will likely do a forming session of 25 with cheap bullets and then reload those with good bullets until they're toast. In each of the sessions with the good bullets and 25 formed cases, I'll take 4-5 unformed ones with me loaded with cheap bullets to get those out of the way and eventually I'll have them all formed without going to the range specifically for it except for once.

I usually seat into the lands a bit anyways. I did see the print calls for .004 crush but I don't have a straight 284 print to compare to.

 

[Tac-O]

I usually seat into the lands a bit anyways. I did see the print calls for .004 crush but I don't have a straight 284 print to compare to.

Many of them I've been able to find (mostly shehane) are 1.882-1.885 to the neck