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

One of the shooters had a misfire yesterday with 7.62x51 MEN 147 (I had half a dozen such instances of 'misfires' however they were invariably misfeeds) I held the defective round until the end of the shoot and then returned it to the shooter to make safe, turned out he lacked the gear to pull it down so it came home with me and was separated this morning.

I was very surprised at just how fine the powder they use is, it was also a mix of different sized kernel. Does anyone know who's powder they would use as it must throw perfectly in a culver type thrower. I assume it will be something not available to us so I am just curious.

Normally use reloads, but bought some German MEN 7.62x51 .A bit worried about the bolt on my Parker Hale T4 being a bit hard to turn though, a quick internet search reveals others have the same problem with Bolt Actions.

Became a bit worried about using the rest of the 195 rounds, so being the canny scotsman I reduced the powder load by 10% rather than waste them, the cases are Berdan so expendable anyway.

Discovered on pulling them that that they contain 44.7Gr of the fine powder you mentioned, but can't find any reference on the net to what kind of powder it is. The bullet is 147Gr steel cored nickel plated.

As I mostly only get to shoot Full Bore at 200x reducing the load to 40Gr was just fine.

25Pdr wrote:Normally use reloads, but bought some German MEN 7.62x51 .A bit worried about the bolt on my Parker Hale T4 being a bit hard to turn though, a quick internet search reveals others have the same problem with Bolt Actions.

Became a bit worried about using the rest of the 195 rounds, so being the canny scotsman I reduced the powder load by 10% rather than waste them, the cases are Berdan so expendable anyway.

Discovered on pulling them that that they contain 44.7Gr of the fine powder you mentioned, but can't find any reference on the net to what kind of powder it is. The bullet is 147Gr steel cored nickel plated.

As I mostly only get to shoot Full Bore at 200x reducing the load to 40Gr was just fine.

Please note that the cases are most definitely NOT expendable. They reload really well - much easier than RG. I'll take all you have

These are Berdan primed Rog, what do you use to pop the old primers out and do you have a good source of Berdan primers?

ovenpaa wrote:These are Berdan primed Rog, what do you use to pop the old primers out and do you have a good source of Berdan primers?

Wamadet hydraulic decapper. Easy-peasy with MEN and DAG brass.
RG is more of a chore but do-able.
Just come into some berdan primers - there's about 100k of them.

I experimented one afternoon by filling cases 3/4 up with water and then putting a piece of bar just under .308" diameter in the case mouth and giving it a clout with a hammer, Get it right and the primers often came out first time.

100k?? I assume you will have a few spare to sell off then?

Like 25Pdr I normally reload this calibre but I picked up some of the MEN surplus cheaply a while back and tried it yesterday in my Envoy at 500yd. It seemed to shoot fairly well but I was getting a slightly sticky bolt and the primers were well flattened so I think I might follow suit by pulling them and dropping the load a little. Oh, and if anyone does decide to flog off any berdan primers I wouldn't mind a few...

I have some AMA (Danish) NATO that is hard to open the bolt on even in my AI so downloading is a good idea. A collet puller would make life a lot easier in such situations.

I have been meaning to get one for ages

ovenpaa wrote:A collet puller would make life a lot easier in such situations.

Ditto - I always think there's something very very wrong with putting a loaded round inside a hammer and bashing it repeatedly on the ground!

If you use a collet you are best to loosen the bullet by levering it sideways a couple of thou to loosen it first - a suitable hole in a piece of wood does the job.