Can anyone help me? I want to make .45-70 govt regualr ammo. I know it is very rare in this game, but I know that the merchants restock the hollow points (at least I think they do). What do I do exactly? My repair is at 95. I just really want this ammo for my brush gun. I will do anything to get a ton of this ammo!!!

You need 4 things to make ammo: cases, primer, powder and lead (if shotgun then hulls too).

Lead you can get from breaking down scrap metal or ammo
Primers you can buy, or get from breaking down ammo
Powder you can buy, or get from breaking down ammo
A few types of cases you can buy boxes of, but not the more interesting ammo types.

Note, when you buy boxes of cases of ammo, or Primer, or sometimes Jars of Powder the game
may not automatically put the stuff in your inventory properly, it will still be in its container. In that case
you need to drop it and pick it up again.

Anyways, the supply of certain ammo types is really low, so you will be breaking down similar ammo.
For example, when making 357 ammo, I need small pistol primers, so I can get those from breaking
down 9mm ammo, which I don't use.

You can everything you need to make 45-70 easily, except the cases.

You get some cases from reusing, some from whatever you buy
and breakdown, and sometimes you can buy boxes of cases, but not for the more exotic ammo types.

You aren't going to be making large amounts of 45-70 no matter what you do. It isn't that common.
I think, that Contreres in the McCarran airport concourse sells a good amount of it though.

Either that, or play evil and at high level kill lots of NCR Veteran Rangers? I think the have brush guns
later in the game.

It tells you everything you need in the reloading bench list. You need primer, powder, lead, and a case. .45-70 gov't round and cases are very rare to my knowledge. The best way to get the cases would be to get the hand-loader perk (it lets you sometimes catch the cases of the bullets you fire and also gives you ton of great bullet recipes, example, .308 JSP round does 50% more damage). You can buy a lot of hollow point rounds then shoot them at a wall or something and eventually you'll have some cases. Then you have to go to the reloading bench and mouse over the .45-70 gov't round and it'll tell you exactly how much of everything you need. You can buy primer, powder, and lead in the misc section of most stores and you can also get 200 lead for 1 scrap metal if you break it down at the reloading bench. You can also break down bullets you don't use often to get it.

P.S. Every

As an aside, does anybody know how often Hand Loader gets you cases? You get "some" empties without the perk and "some" empties with it... Never policed my brass closely enough to see how much benefit there is.

Hand Loader (and also Vigilant Recycler) has an Entry Point called "Modify Chance for Ammo Item". For each ammo item, there is a value that determines the percent chance that you'll silently get the associated "empty ammo" item. This perk entry point alters that value by 2x for both Handloader and Vigilant Recycler when a weapon of their associated weapon category is equipped.

You'll never get a ton of this ammo.

Numbers man (or woman), I need numbers!

Ok, thanks. I just wish there was more of this ammo. I hav ea ton of caps but no one sells it!

For the entire game, the ammo conversion is unnessesaraly. i never even touch it. it makes the pip boy have too much information. get headache to read it sometimes.

I was in the same boat you were last play through. I pick a round and then build a character around it. If you are on PC you can always console command some cases in which is what i did. By putting the cases in the game i still have to make the ammo which in the case of the .45-70 you would need to break down both 10mm and .44 magnums to get the large pistol primer, which would also give you some pistol powder, and some lead. Just to speed up your situation i have included the base id for the cases so you can console command them in if you choose.

player.additem 00140AA4 1000

This will add 1000 .45-70 cases to your inventory at which point if you had the materials you could hand load some ammo.

If you are on a console well sorry to tease you like this but there are distinct advantages to playing just about any game on a PC.

Asai

Mod them in, Obsidian went to great effort to make crafting ammo and chems a massive waste of time.

Print these out for reference if you can:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_recipes