Yesterday's Weapons Forums

I woke up early this morning and couldn't get back to sleep so decided to load a few rounds. I have a couple hundred 7.62x54r cases deprimed, cleaned and trimmed. They are from the "government overrun" headstamp "JMS 02" ammo I got from CDNN a couple months ago.

When I went to seat the bullets, they would nearly fall into the case and were very loose, even after crimping. I then ran a couple back through the sizer and noticed the expander ball wasn't even touching on the way out. The inside of the case necks mic .3105" to .3115" after sizing. I tried a few pieces of Grafs, Winchester, and S&B brass and they all did as they were supposed to and mic .3085" to .309" after sizing.

Apparently the brass at the neck is thinner on these cases. I thought to try running them through my .308 neck only die after changing expander ball, but the 7.62x54r cases won't fit up into the die.

Now what? I guess could use them to load with .312" cast lead bullets, but I don't cast my own and consequently and don't shoot much cast lead.

Now what do I do?

We have been discussing this ammunition on these forums in a couple of other places. This information makes the discussion even more interesting.

I have used Igman (we are told this is who makes this ammo) commercial 7.62x54R brass in small quantities a few times and I didn't have any problems with bullet pull, thin brass, etc.

What kind of dies do you have for this caliber? The Lee die set comes from their factory set up to use .308 bullets. If the brass is as thin as you describe, if you had a Lee sizer die, you might be able to size them in that and seat .310/.311 bullets in them so long as the heel of the bullet doesn't have too sharp of an edge on it. If you're using a Lee sizing die with a .311 expander ball in it, this won't work because the sizing die obviously isn't taking it down enough to start with. When I was loading this caliber, I was able to successfully load either .308 or .310/.311 after buying the larger expander ball. That is what makes me think the Lee sizer die body is set up to squeeze it down enough to take the .308 bullet and hold it.

I've noticed that some brands of 7.62x54R brass tend to be on the thin side, but apparently not as much so as you describe. I've mentioned before that the eastern European brass does have some manufacturing idiosyncrasies, like rim size, primer pocket and flash hole.

Also, we have to bear in mind that the ammo under discussion was made to order for a military contract, so no reloading of it was kept in mind as it might be from a commercial source. I know the price of brass was not as high back in 2002 as it is today, but even so, the maker used a brass case and may have been trying to save as much material as possible on a fairly large contract.

It looks like you found a ready solution. One of my points was tolerances. Even new dies can be oversized or undersized in the neck area. I doubt that 1-2 thousandths thickness would make that much difference in the neck unless the die was borderline spec. I hone out some of my fl dies just to make sure the brass is not overworked in the neck and still the expander is required to open the neck up about 4- 6 thousandths. I also occasionally anneal the necks so they won't split. Your minimum necksizing should give you plenty of life unless the neck area of the chamber is oversized. P.O. Ackley had chapter on all of this in one of his books. Minimum neck sizing also results in slower case length growth and this I can personally testify to.

Greg

It doesn't sound like the sizing die is the problem, as he said that he could load other brands of brass no problem. The sizing die usually isn't too big, if anything, they make them on the small side because the expander ball really takes them out to the proper size. He says that RCBS dies were used. I don't know what size bullet RCBS sets them up for, but I know that Lee sets them up for .308 bullets. If we're talking about a lot of this brass, it might be worth getting a set of the Lee dies for $20-some dollars to get the sizing die that takes them down to a smaller size. The 7.5 solution sounds good without having to buy the Lee 7.62x54R dies.

BTW

On my remaining unfired factory ammo the bullets measure .310".

Gary,

I would not know about RCBS or their production tolerances. I do have a few of their short lived production of their equivalent to Lee's RGB dies, but most of my dies are Lee and they do size the 7.62 Russian more than adequately. I don't know whether each manufacturer considers neck thickness beyond the expander diameter, but Lee makes sure their dies compensate for variations in neck thickness. It is their 303 Brit dies that I hone the neck portion on. I have four of these dies in 303. It is worth it to be able to tailor the dies to suit different applications. I have a rifle in 303 that has a .308 bore and it is better suited to .308 bullets. Time wise it is cheaper to buy another die as you said.