Just a word of caution regarding nato 7.62 brass.
Posted: Sun Dec 17, 2023 2:30 pm
I recently bought another 308 win rifle and loaded up some GGG match brass. This is 7.62 nato brass and there's nowt wrong with that but one has to remove the swaged in metal surrounding the primer pocket prior to reloading.
I wanted to check the velocity of the two brands of primers I have, magtech and S&B so I loaded up10 of these cases with the S&B, which were the last 10 I had then wanted to reload 20 with the magtech. I use a Lee hand held priming tool and there was no way I could get the magtech primers into my prepped cases. I had to use my lyman case deburring tool to cut the brass back, even then the primers were significantly harder to squeeze in when compared to the 10 S&B that I primed the previous 10 with.
Also the primers looked to be much deeper in the case. I have previously loaded 100 + 30/30 cases with these primers and experienced no problems whatsoever.
At the range the magtech primers would not fire whereas the S&B ones did. I retained one of the S&B cartridges unfired and measured the depth of the face of the primer below case head, 0.002"
for the S&B, for the magtech 0.006".
I pulled all the bullets and powder from the magtech cases and, after warning the wife couldn't make any of them fire, after a short while I deprimed the cases in question and found that in every case the anvil had come out of the cup in EVERY case. At this point I blamed myself so I resized some federal cases put the anvils back in the cups and inserted 5 into the 5, F C brass i'd prepped using the lee primer putter inner on my classic turret press, after warning the wife again, all 5 of these primers fired normally in the federal brass without bullets or powder BTW thus negating my negative waves about rifle headspace.
In hindsight I should have realised all was not well with the brass and the force needed to seat the primers, not to mention the extra depth of the primer in the pocket.
I thought I wonder if it was the hand tool? so I primed 5 of the GGG brass using the same method as above also using primers I'd just decapped from the cases.
The primers were no 0.002" beneath the casehead and they all went bang.
I've slept on it and the only conclusion I can come up with is as follows, the S&B primers have 3 legs to the anvil, the Magtech don't. The magtech primer is on the left in both instances, The magtech primer was fired out of the gun in question but the S&B one wasn't.
I can't begin to speculate what has transpired here other than I'm at fault but, having said that I've just primed some new win 30/30 brass with the Magtech primers and they were quite hard to install BUT the primers are just about 0.002" down from the vase head.
Does anyone have any experience of a similar issue? My immediate reaction is to scrap the GGG brass.
This image shows the case head which has already been reamed using the lyman LR reaming tool. The annular ring showing where the case has been swaged is still clearly visible.I wanted to check the velocity of the two brands of primers I have, magtech and S&B so I loaded up10 of these cases with the S&B, which were the last 10 I had then wanted to reload 20 with the magtech. I use a Lee hand held priming tool and there was no way I could get the magtech primers into my prepped cases. I had to use my lyman case deburring tool to cut the brass back, even then the primers were significantly harder to squeeze in when compared to the 10 S&B that I primed the previous 10 with.
Also the primers looked to be much deeper in the case. I have previously loaded 100 + 30/30 cases with these primers and experienced no problems whatsoever.
At the range the magtech primers would not fire whereas the S&B ones did. I retained one of the S&B cartridges unfired and measured the depth of the face of the primer below case head, 0.002"
for the S&B, for the magtech 0.006".
I pulled all the bullets and powder from the magtech cases and, after warning the wife couldn't make any of them fire, after a short while I deprimed the cases in question and found that in every case the anvil had come out of the cup in EVERY case. At this point I blamed myself so I resized some federal cases put the anvils back in the cups and inserted 5 into the 5, F C brass i'd prepped using the lee primer putter inner on my classic turret press, after warning the wife again, all 5 of these primers fired normally in the federal brass without bullets or powder BTW thus negating my negative waves about rifle headspace.
In hindsight I should have realised all was not well with the brass and the force needed to seat the primers, not to mention the extra depth of the primer in the pocket.
I thought I wonder if it was the hand tool? so I primed 5 of the GGG brass using the same method as above also using primers I'd just decapped from the cases.
The primers were no 0.002" beneath the casehead and they all went bang.
I've slept on it and the only conclusion I can come up with is as follows, the S&B primers have 3 legs to the anvil, the Magtech don't. The magtech primer is on the left in both instances, The magtech primer was fired out of the gun in question but the S&B one wasn't.
I can't begin to speculate what has transpired here other than I'm at fault but, having said that I've just primed some new win 30/30 brass with the Magtech primers and they were quite hard to install BUT the primers are just about 0.002" down from the vase head.
Does anyone have any experience of a similar issue? My immediate reaction is to scrap the GGG brass.