This morning I made a huge step forward in this process. I put about 1/2", maybe a bit less, water in a cake pan and set five cases in it, base down of course. I then heated each until the neck/shoulder area was briefly reddish in color, but played the torch flame down the cases all around until they were annealed to the water line, then tipped them over. Primed and loaded each with 4 gr. Bullseye, a small toilet paper wad, then grits, finished off with a 2mm wax plug. Firing gave a great deal of expansion, but not 100%. Re-annealed same way, and reloaded same way. Next firing gave 96+% full fire-forming.
They're good enough now for a medium load of powder and shot. No signs of splitting anywhere. I know it's better to be safe than sorry, but the 4 gr. Bullseye seems so light that I wonder what the results would be on the first firing if I upped it to 6 gr.
As Mike told me a couple days ago, this has turned out to be a two or three step/firing process. I had previously thought it could be accomplished with one firing. If I had known the effort required to do this with 48 cases I may not have ever taken the plunge. Probably better that I didn't know up front. Anyway, I'll load up the five cases with a lighter than normal hunting load and see if we complete the "smoothing out" of the case walls. If I get the time to mess with them tomorrow morning I may have some pics. I must say, it is looking promising, if not economical (in terms of time and effort).
The goal from the outset was to have .410 cases that had more case capacity than anything you could buy. I am cautiously optimistic that we will, indeed. Oh, BTW, I am using a Yildiz double barrel to do the fire-forming.
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