Thread: Ammo reloading
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Old 02-21-2009, 11:44 AM
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kota1342000 kota1342000 is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Colorado
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Default A bit of personal experience...

I reload much of my own ammunition for my own guns, as I imagine many here on the forum do, and I have thought long and hard about the topic of reloading larger ammunition...then I witnessed some things from the Cheyenne Wells Machine Gun Shoot that I couldnt quite believe had I not saw it myself.

A small group of class 3 license owners had taken and older 90mm anti-aircraft gun and mounted it on what was obviously the carrige for the M114 155mm howitzer. In effect a 90mm anti-tank gun, and were reloading their own ammunition for it on site to shoot. The reloading press was an auto-body 12T shop press, and a brass tube had to be drilled and placed so the effect of the primer would be distributed throughout the length of the 90mm brass case (about 18in in length). The round as i remember were casted and machined 24lb solid shot, and the propellant was 7 1/2 pounds of large grain smokeless powder (I figured this out to be about 25,400 grains for my scale of reloading).

Now, being not only a reloading buff, but also an anti-tank buff having been a TOW gunner, my good time got better and better as I saw what their target was...a concrete wall made by stacking 4X4X8 concrete blocks 4 high and 3 deep.
Jester had mentioned earlier in this thread about brass casings for large caliber weapons having 1 shot life, and I had thought the exact same thing; therefore I was a tad bit on the alarmed side to see the crew seating the reloaded shells with a few taps on the rims into the breech with an 8lb sledge hammer! After that I stood back a little more and kept my fingers crossed that there wern't going to be any malfunctions, and fortunately there were none.
And soon I found myself laughing with tears running down my face as the crew of this 90mm AT gun started blowing the concrete wall all to hell. Out in Eastern Colorado with plenty of room to shoot, these 24lb shot were blasting through the wall, then ricocheting almost out to the horizon, about 14 miles away. When the crew was finished it was a pretty pile of concrete gravel and chunks and dust. After the line cease fire a friend and I also hunted down one of the ricochet impacts within 500 yards of the firing position. The ground there was mashed into a lengthwise pit that looked very much like a .45acp bullet shot through ballistic gelatin.
All the way around it was an awesome day.

So that crew proved that it is possible to reload and make ammunition for larger caliber guns, though the safety factor of doing so (in my mind, not trying to disrespect the good 90mm crew) might be questionable, or unknown risk.
General Pain has a set of small industry shop progression, including building a reloading shop up to an munitions factory, and also has a list of what shops need to be built to progress to the next group of shops. Personally, I think I got a picture of what part of the munitions factory would involve that day in Cheyenne Wells.
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