I've been wanting to build a 25-20 SS to enjoy.  now I understand the Captech is no longer ? 

any other sources for new brass ?

A few cracked cases with Bertram? I lost about 75% of the .25-21 I bought from Bertram on the first firing! With the same load I'd used in old cases for dozens of reloads!

Early Bertram exports were pretty bad, all right. The first 20 Bertram .43 Spanish cases had eight body splits in the first firing, with black powder.

The deep-drawn small Bertram cases definitely still have their problems.  I’ve lost a case every other firing in .25-21 and -25 even after annealing.  But I still sense a metallurgical improvement in their stuff.  The .405 Basic cases I got from them looked terrible, but formed easily into .35 Winchester and I haven’t lost a case yet.  My .40-90 Straight cases aren’t particularly troublesome.  Lengths and rims are sometimes annoying, but can be lived with.

It would be nice if Starline started making such stuff, but right now, Bertram is a player in a field where companies with better products have crashed and burned.

Of course, my perspective is different.  I started with Bill Ballard cases.  The .25-20 SS cases were made from .223s, and the .40-90 SSs were made by swaging brass tubing to form a head and rim, tapping the center hole and screwing in a primer pocket from a factory case.  I also made some cases myself, soldering tubing over the heads of other shells, a la Nonte’s Cartridge Conversions book.  None of this stuff ranked high in customer satisfaction, either.  I lost a case of two every firing on these makeshifts.  But I did get to fire the rifles.

Bent_Ramrod wrote on May 31^st, 2018 at 4:56pm:


And I thought I was the only one (still living) who bought those cases.  Looked so crude I never used them, & STILL have them around somewhere.   

Still have one of his small booklets that was the first info I ever acquired on shooting obsolete BP cartridges. 

Redsetter wrote on May 31^st, 2018 at 7:26pm:


the 22 and the Big Bores

I'm also among the still-living who bought things from Bill Ballard, some like a "Perfection"-style paper-patch mould being custom made.  As noted, his work wasn't always pretty.  But aside from there being fewer options 50+ years ago, Mr. Ballard worked fast and at least for me what he made did their job.

Bill Lawrence

I've found the Hornady .405 cases to be of excellent quality, and use them to form to other calibers often. They have never split regardless of what I use them on and the pricing is very good.
Unfortunately I noticed they are suddenly tough to find, and wonder if there was a run on them, or Hornady has suddenly slowed production?