[hammie]

"Ammo.crafter" may be wanting to live up to his name and craft ammo, which will be different from the limited factory offerings. New empty factory brass would be better for that purpose. Maybe he is lucky and has a bunch of .311, 200 grain Woodleigh's. I dunno. Depending on what he is firing it through, he may be better off paying the high price of empty brass from Graf's, or buying some prvi partisan loaded ammunition from midway and pulling the bullets. As 44 AMP noted, firing a round through an SMLE may be a one time deal, if that's what he is using.

I have a #4 SMLE (longbranch arsenal), a pattern 14 rifle (winchester mfg), and a Ruger #1-A, all chambered for .303 British. The chamber on the Ruger is great, and not too bad on the P-14. However, the chamber is so generous on the SMLE #4, that after the first re-loading, about 10% of the brass shows hairline cracks just above the web. Having experienced that incipient separation, I no longer re-load anything from the SMLE, and the once fired brass is just trashed. And yes, when I re-loaded the SMLE brass, I was careful not to set the shoulder back for the second firing in that rifle, and no, my SMLE does not have a headspace problem.

Decades ago, a friend gave me some 30-40 Krag brass, which wasn't that scarce then. I used the unique/cream of wheat method to fireform 303 british. After fire forming 20 rounds, the rifle was a mess of partially cooked breakfast cereal, and non-functional. Although the twenty fire formed 30-40 krag brass worked fine, I gave up on the cream of wheat method.