Long story short.....years ago I had a Marlin 336 Cowboy in 38-55 Winchester, in a moment of not thinking correctly I sold it, jump forward 8 years, I found a replacement, NIB and best price I have seen in a while so I bought it. My old one liked bullets in the .377-.379" diameter range, so I bought some hard cast bullets with a .380" diameter, limited selection due to all the craziness over the last few years.

Problem.....new rifle DOESN'T like them, lever hangs up with the loaded round not fully seating, I can force it and get a slight pop feel. As I am not shooting nuclear loads I test fired a few with no issues. Reloaded a few more and tried a few different things.....running loaded round necks slightly into a sizing die, trimmed the cases back a 0.100" and double runs thru the crimp die, less pop when closing the lever but still there. Hoot gave me some samples of .375" and .377" bullets to try, (thanks good buddy) the .375" bullet loaded rounds drop right in with zero effort or pop.

Now I have 600 hard cast bullets and no way to size them down as I do not cast bullets. Lee offers a bullet sizer gizmo that fits in a standard 7/8" die reloading press but doesn't offer a .375" die. Regular type bullet sizing dies require a bullet sizing press and I don't really want to spend $300+ to deal with 600 bullets.

Anyone know of any tool to resize 600 hard cast bullets using a RCBS Rock Chucker press or cost effective solution to this issue?????????????

Gunner

ps
why is "t e s t" not a forum accepted word?

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https://www.instagram.com/41gunner/
41 Mags rule, Baers rock!

Lee makes their classic sizing die in .376, which might work for you, but it would probably be best to do a chamber cast plus slug the bore before proceeding any further. Some of those Marlin throats and chambers have been know to be cut incorrectly.

If, however, the .375 bullets really work well with everything as is, I can’t imagine sizing the .380s to .376 wouldn’t work very nicely. If all else fails, the next size down in the Lee line is .358, and that could be easily opened up to whatever size you need. I’m certain there are a few fellows here who could manage that little bit of machine work pretty much blindfolded!

Otony

What brass are you using? Winchester brass is too thick to usually allow bullets of that diameter to chamber correctly. If you have been using Winchester or other commercial brass, try using Starline brass. It is a little thinner at the case mouth and allows larger bullets like 0.379 - 0.380 diameter to chamber. If they have it, Starline will usually send you a sample case or two to try out. They also make a slightly longer traditional case at 2.125" length as opposed to the shorter 2.080" case length. For my Browning 1885 traditional hunter rifle I couldn't chamber the 0.379 diameter bullets that I needed for the bore diameter when seated in Winchester cases. I tried the Starline cases and found that the longer case fit the chamber just fine, and I could seat 0.379" diameter bullets and still chamber without a problem.

If you want, I can send you one or two of the 2.125" length Starling cases....

in my Bullberry barrel! Surprised the heck out of me. Starline catalogs the 2.125" (IIRC that's the correct old standard rather than 2.085").

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Sincerely,

Hobie