The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

saddler wrote:
The REAL pain is when a Berdan case gets mixed in with a batch of Boxer ones and breaks the pin half way through a reloading session.
Don't ask me how I know...

Not with a Lee die, it just punches straight through the case head......... Don't ask me how I know! :lol:

Thanks for the timely warning, as it is pi$$ing with rain here I decided not to go to Bisley today but instead to sit in my reloading shed loading up several hundred .303" Privi cases........I will carefully check first now.

well as I use milsurp as well as PPU I have on occasion, got a Berdan case in the Boxer tub fortunately as I use Lee sizer/deprimers its no big drama just loosen off the locknut and tap the depriming rod back in

Dr. Strangelove wrote:Following a PM from Dougan, I checked that all NNY marked cases I have are berdan primed, which they are. Dougan said that he had some NNY marked ones that are boxer.

My NNY cases are from 1967 (I guess NNY-67 means 1967!) so that might explain why they're berdan.

Probably worth double checking yours before chucking them!

I'm not sure what the difference is between the PPU and the nny (anyone?) - I assumed it was made somewhere different, as it didn't shoot well, even compared to normal PPU - I only bought a couple of boxes of it, and then always checked the headstamp for PPU after that.

nny headstamp:

I don't know when Privvi switched to boxer, but your post is a good reminder to check unknown cases before decapping; especially old ones...

And I wouldn't be embarrassed about breaking a pin - from what I've read on here, it's not that uncommon.....though I've only read on here of one person who's broken a chrono :P (and may never live it down :lol: )

Dr. Strangelove wrote:Having borrowed a Redding neck sizing die in .303 after a very kind offer from Ovenpaa, I managed to break it within 20 minutes of use! D'oh!

It turns out that Privi cases bearing thee NNY headstamp are berdan primed, not boxer. I just assumed (!) that all Privi stuff was boxer. Not so! I don't know if this is common knowledge but it's new to me!

However, I rang Redding up and told the guy what had happened. He'll be sending me two decap rod assemblies in the post, for free!


Moral of the story is to always check and never assume!

Just .303 cases then? I've a load headstamped NNY in other calibres and it's definitely boxer primed.

Comrad Strangelove I think you will find that NNY may be cyrillic for PPU

DOGGER2UK wrote:Comrad Strangelove I think you will find that NNY may be cyrillic for PPU

I knew that! Which is why I just assumed that it would be boxer, as with the other PPU stuff!

Dr. Strangelove wrote:

DOGGER2UK wrote:Comrad Strangelove I think you will find that NNY may be cyrillic for PPU

I knew that!

I didn't ...just had to look it up....'you learn something new every day'

...I'm still convinced the 'cyrillic' stamped ones aren't as good...

I have about 150 nny stamped .308 cases that I use for my sons "general purpose" use, not had a problem with them unlike Federal with loose primer pockets.

However, I won't use their straight walled "handgun" cases, out of a 100 PPU stamped .44 mag cases I bought new from Kranks (as they'd stopped stocking Starline) 12 have now split at the rim, only been loaded 5 or 6 times with a moderate load of 5.4gr Titegroup and 200 or 245gr bullets.

saddler wrote:...thats wot baby Jesus invented the handheld torch for - peeking into cartridge cases to see what primer system they used

The REAL pain is when a Berdan case gets mixed in with a batch of Boxer ones and breaks the pin half way through a reloading session.
Don't ask me how I know...

Been there, done that - more than once!