Okay, I need some knowledge from people who know about the .45-60 cartridge. I have an Uberti 76 in that caliber, and was going to start loading ammo for it today, and that when I ran into problems.
First, it has been my assumption that .45-60 is just a shortened .45-70, but I am starting to believe that this is not exactly the case. First, the Jamison brass I obtained will not fit in my .45-70 Lee shell holder. I looked it up on Wiki, which is always hit or miss, and the articles there DO indicate that the rim of the 60 is slightly wider than the 70. Okay, no problem, I’ll get 60 specific shell holder. But when I ran the first case through the RCBS sizing die, I was surprised to see a noticeable bottleneck in the cartridge. The diagrams and pictures on the Wiki article do no indicate that this should exist, and when I run the 60’s through the 70 sizing die, no bottleneck is created. Putting no primer, powder or bullet into the case, I determined that the non bottlenecked case will chamber. (So will the bottlenecked one, but so what?) But then I noticed something else, while case(s) will fully chamber, I can not close the action. The bolt seems to be all the way forward, but there’s still quite a bit of distance for he lever to go to close, and it will not go any further. Nor will the extractor grab the rim to pull it out of the chamber. So, I’ve got a few problems here. And rather than screw something up, I wanted to get the advice of people here who have loaded this cartridge in this rifle.
So, as I see it…
Problem 1. .45-70 shell holder is too small. Simple solution: obtain properly sized holder. Problem 2. RCBS dies (they came with the gun) seem to be creating a bottleneck that should not exist. Possible solutions. Use Lee .45-70 die to deprime and resize shells. OR Obtain Lee .45-60 dies. (I prefer them anyway, but would be annoyed if I had to do so.) Obvious corollary: Can you properly resize .45-60 with a .45-70 die? Problem 3. Is something wrong with my rifle? Solutions: Get advice.
Can anyone offer any insights as to all of this?