im confused - a little help ?

[watab kid]

anyway i got a bag full of bullets from a friend to shoot in my nagant revolver they are headstamped 25-20 win , they are straight walled rimmed cartridges , they look like a 32 s&w to my eye , or the 762 x 38R nagant 

 

when i google 25-20 win i get info for a bottle necked cartridge  and this "The .25-20 Winchester, or WCF (Winchester center fire), was developed around 1895 for the Winchester Model 1892 lever action rifle. It was based on necking down the .32-20 Winchester"

 

thus my confusion ,

[Michigan Slim]

Sounds like they were fire formed.

[Three Foot Johnson]

Serviceable ammo for Nagant revolvers can be made from .32-20 cases, and .32-20 cases can be made from .25-20 cases. Properly headstamped .25-20 cases are getting pretty scarce though, and haven't been made in awhile, so it would be kind of dumb to do it that way. Those of us with .25-20's are making cases from .32-20's.

[watab kid]

37 minutes ago, Michigan Slim said:

Sounds like they were fire formed.

 

OK , your suggesting they are 25-20s that were fireformed to 32-20s ? this seems like a lot of stretch to me 

 

45 minutes ago, Three Foot Johnson said:

Serviceable ammo for Nagant revolvers can be made from .32-20 cases, and .32-20 cases can be made from .25-20 cases. Properly headstamped .25-20 cases are getting pretty scarce though, and haven't been made in awhile, so it would be kind of dumb to do it that way. Those of us with .25-20's are making cases from .32-20's.

 

so you also think these were 25-20s that someone fireformed to 32-20s ?

and you are suggesting that can be reversed ? do you do this regularly - would you think to do that with these ? 

 

and if im getting this right the 25-20 bottlenecks are formed from necked down 32-20s ? 

how come i dont find the 25-20 straight walls in a search ? 

[watab kid]

so further searching has possibly cleared things a little , it seems there was/is a 25-20 Single Shot , im getting it that this was a tapered straight wall that looks to be a 32 base , so if im correct my cartridges started as these and were fireformed to the nagant , which is what i was being told above and i now can see why it was not that big a stretch and i now understand how these could be necked down as could the 32-20s for the bottle neck 25-20s , 

 

this can sure get confusing - after i shoot these is anyone cowboy going to want the brass or is it then throw away ? [ill give it away] 

i suppose a nagant reloader but are there any of these around really ? 

[Three Foot Johnson]

If they're stamped .25-20 Win, then they're .25-20 Winchester cases, not .25-20 Single Shot. Nagant ammo made from the .25-20 Single Shot case is undersize enough that it might split when fired in a Nagant chamber, and would definitely need to be trimmed. It also runs about $4 per piece, if you stumble on to any.

 

Several years ago I acquired my first .32-20, and I had 50 brand new .25-20 cases, so... I necked them up to make .32-20's. Didn't split a single one. I also had a Nagant revolver for a time, and used .32-20 cases to make ammo for it. They work fine, but are too short to form a gas seal like the original Nagant cases do, but that's how most people make Nagant ammo to shoot in their 1895 Russian revolvers today.

 

Now that .25-20 cases haven't been available for several years, I make cases by necking down .32-20 brass in a 3 step process. I know folks who say, "I just run 'em into a .25-20 sizer die and have never crushed one". My experience is I lose about 1 in 10 that way, but since developing a multi-step process, it's rare to crush one.

 

Don't throw them away after shooting them - I know Lee makes 7.62x38r dies. They can be reloaded for the Nagant, .32-20, and possibly even back to .25-20 if they're in good shape and annealed first.