Well I never tried it. Back in the day it was "don't bother reloading aluminum". Well times are a changing. I went to the indoor range thr other day and I was stuffing my pockets with brass like a bad guy in a treasure room only stopping to pick out steel, Digging around on thr Internet I can't find a whole lot. Seems like aluminum is definitely not as durable as brass. For example a straight walled 38spl or 45cult brass might be reloadable 10, 20 maybe as many as 50 times. But straight wall aluminum shell casings last maybe 3 loadings. Figured I better figure it out before I have to. Anyone else try it?
You might check on the Handloadersbench. Link is on SM's main page. That subject has been mentioned a while back.
Are they like "omg a possible plus pee load! Banned!"? Are they a bunch of fud RINOs or casual gun owning dems that think "may issue" gun permits are fair? Example: the high road dot org where they do all that and parrot atf fantasy propaganda on NFA subjects.
Oh god then they run the risk of being alright. I interested in aluminum because they're available and weigh practically nothing. Might load them up as a light weight 90gr standard or slightly below standard pee load.
I guess I'm a hand loader. Every center fire metallic round I ever loaded was on single stage machines. If I ever got into loading automation I would take it way too far.
The aluminum cases can be difficult to load. Some I have seen were berdan style prime. Others had odd size primer pockets. Other than that if you find everything checks out be careful with the load work it up and be aware of excess pressure signs aluminum is not brass!!!
I checked when I picked them up, the speer cases I have are boxer primed. But I will start converting berdan primed brass, for 8mm mauser. Preplandemic pricing 8x57JS was about 50 cent per brass boxer primer hole shell. And because it's so unpopular it's not gone up much and is still available.
Brass I can find. Boolets and powder, too. Primers is the tough one. Glad I bought while the buyin was gud. BTW on nwfa a guy is working on reloading primers. Very talented fellow and I'm following that thread pretty closely.
Mebbe I'll tell them how I resize old beer cans down to working cases and glue a washer to the back to make a rim. After that if you neck size only you can get 5 reloads out of it. Oh, and hey, does anybody else use KY for case lube? Pro tip - the cherry flavored one works the best..
Now that you mention it...I wonder how hard it would be to resize those aluminum beer bottles to 40mm...
I've tried it in .45 ACP. I loaded 50 with standard loads of Unique and split 2 of the 50 cases. Another member at the range uses them in Wild Bunch matches where they move too fast to police their own brass and he's been loading reduced loads in aluminum cases without any issues. They size just fine, but you want to be mindful that aluminum oxide is abrasive if you aren't using carbide dies.
Everything is out of stock now, but when stuff comes back you might look at Tula Bardan primers and an RCBS Berdan de-capper. Can't get much easier once you get the tool adjusted correctly. That can be a little of a learning curve at $6 a pop for the bits. It's also such a pain in the tail that I have two of the de-cappers now with one dedicated to 7.62x39 and one to 7.5x55 Swiss. Once correctly adjusted you can run 1000 between bit changes. Probably more if you're patient and don't try to lever every stuck primer out.
