303 Ammo - Found more at the bottom of the box.What can you tell me about it?
- Thread starter jparent
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No, you have it the wrong way round. ball mark VII is flat based and Mark VIIIz is boat-tailed.
Mark VIIIz is only marginally higher pressure than VII at 20.5 tsi, and is well within the proof pressure of 25 tsi.
The packet of standard rounds is nice. These are the ballistic standards that each production lot is shot against to ensure the ammunition is within spec.
Regards
TonyE
####. Brain fart, that's what I meant.
I've shot a lot of the Canadian and US made ammo from WWII. I haven't found any of it to have corrosive primers. Some of it I bought one time was hang firing. When I got it, I was warned it was neither accurate nor dependable. At the time, International didn't know what the issue with it was. They had a pallet with 112,000 rounds on it. They wouldn't have sold it to me, other than they knew I wouldn't take any chances with it and would break it down into components, which I did.
Once the first couple of hundred were pulled it was pretty obvious the primers were the problem. Some looked new and some had plugged primer holes. All of them were Boxer primed and all of them were loaded with a ball powder, which turned out to have the same burn rate as Ball C and 174 gr boat tail bullets. About half of the primers were filled with a green, waxy paste, just like you see on holsters with copper rivets.
I spent two weeks, pulling a thousand rounds per night, after work and dumping the powder into one gallon containers. I wasn't going to bother with popping out the primers but my baby sister, worked cheap and I could never keep her out of my gun room. It kept her out of my hair and she did a really good job.
The cases were all dated 1944 and had the DI C broad arrow stamp.
At the time, it was worth more as components than fully functioning and assembled milsurp ammo. By the late sixties, some of the surplus that came in was a crap shoot. I took a chance, and sold it all, minus primers as 100 round bulk packs, which included brass cases, bullets and powder, which I took a chance and labeled as Ball C. I had loaded and shot it, using the Lyman manual and of course weighing out a few hundred charges directly from the cases and using that as a guideline. It worked well.
My cost on that stuff was less than half a cent per round. I kept 5000 rounds for myself and not long after, wished I had kept more.
The powder was as good as new. The primers were the issue.
Anyway, as eaglenester pointed out. None contained Cordite and none were primed with corrosive primers.
I have seen ammo from this era loaded with extruded powders, cordite and ball powder. I have seen off shore stuff loaded with Berdan primers but I haven't seen any ammo loaded after 1940ish, loaded in North America with anything but Boxer primed cases.
My experience is very limited so don't take this as gospel. Everything make offshore was Berdan primed.
If your .303 had the small Boxer primer and was non corrosive then it was made by Defence Industries. It would have been headstamped "DI Z 1944" and would not have had the "Broad Arrow within C" stamp.
Alternatively, ammunition made at the Dominion Arsenal had the large .250 inch Berdan primer and was headstamped "DAC 1944 VII" with the Broad Arrow within the "C". Like all of this type made in Britain and the Dominions it was corrosive primed. Dominion Arsenal continued to make this until well after WW2.
Regards
TonyE
Alternatively, ammunition made at the Dominion Arsenal had the large .250 inch Berdan primer and was headstamped "DAC 1944 VII" with the Broad Arrow within the "C". Like all of this type made in Britain and the Dominions it was corrosive primed. Dominion Arsenal continued to make this until well after WW2.
Regards
TonyE
