Gary Reeder
back in the late 80s and early 90's there was a fellow here
Saturday, June 09, 2018, 21:41

in Flagstaff that was building custom TC barrels. He was using 223, 30-40 Krag and 303 British brass. I was told (2nd hand info here) that he had a lot of problem with cases bulging badly with any somewhat hot load and separating at the base with both the 30-40 and 303.

It was sort of a strange thing. He died while he was here in Flagstaff. His wife contacted us to see if we wanted to buy a lot of barrel blanks and lugs he had, which I did. She shipped them all the way to Florida to us. The odd thing was less than a year later we moved out here from Florida and I had forgotten that the fellow we got the barrel blanks and stuff from had lived here until folks started coming in with his barrels, wanting muzzle brakes, rechambering and such. Some of those barrels were 30-40 and 303 barrels that had been rechambered into his own calibers.

At the time I had no idea who he was as I had never heard of him, and the custom TC builders can be counted on the fingers on one hand.

He was loading duplex and triplex loads in them and they were pretty hot. I won't say that is why I never went with either brass but I had the 405, 348, 44 magnum and 30-30 brass at that time (early '94), and J.D. had his 444, 225 and 221 Fireball brass that was his thing, so I saw no reason to branch out into brass that was weaker than the 405 I already was using. Now I have gone sorta nuttier than a squirrel turd and added the 204 brass, 22 Hornet brass, 445 Super Mag brass, 50 Alaskan brass, 45-70 brass, 475 Maximum brass, 357 Maximum brass, 454 Casull brass, 475 Linebaugh brass, 500 Linebaugh brass, 460 S&W brass, 500 S&W brass, 25-20 brass, 32 H&R brass, and 577 Snider brass. And I have probably left one or two out. So I think I will pass on the 30-40 and 303 brass.