303brit POF ammo ...

T

Timberlord

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I have a couple hundred rounds of this ammo and so far every one has been a hangfire , pretty much as I suspected would happen but the price was dirt cheap .
Would it be feasible to dump the propellant out of this stuff , and recharge it with fresh powder ?
One thing this ammo is good for is to cure the "flinch syndrome " and stay on target .
 
Timberlord said:
I have a couple hundred rounds of this ammo and so far every one has been a hangfire , pretty much as I suspected would happen but the price was dirt cheap .
Would it be feasible to dump the propellant out of this stuff , and recharge it with fresh powder ?
One thing this ammo is good for is to cure the "flinch syndrome " and stay on target .
Click to expand...

The other thing "hang-fire ammo is really really good at is putting a bulge in a perfectly good barrel...pull all the bullets and use the slugs/brass but turf the powder and primers.
 
Where was it made?

If the ammo is charged with cordite then you may not be able to get it out of the case, if it is loose powder then you can re-charge it.

The thing is though, is it a click ... bang or a pop ... bang. If it is a click ... bang then to me that is the primer not going off and the powder is not the issue, a pop ... bang can cause what fingers said, the primer is going off and can cause the bullet jump from the case to the barrel.

I had some click ... bangs with old cordite ammo but not all that many.
 
My experience with this ammo was the primers, The brass is brittle too. I remember seeing a lot of moisture exposure. If I remember it is cordite. Pull the bullets, reload with better components.

Any picts you can post of a pulled cartridge and a handfull of cartridges?
 
The problem with this ammo was the primers. The only thing salvageable is the bullets. The case used a large .250" Berdan primer which is hard to get.
It did come in nice 32 rd boxes which were handy for storing reloads.
 
Thx for the info guys.
These , so far , are click bangs with about a second delay.
Not gonna mess around with them.
Looks like I have some pulling to do.
 
This is completely at your discretion but IMHO, the issue with the POF surplus was 100% the primers. Their propellant broke down. The cases I picked up were made in the mid fifties.

I pulled just under 3200 bullets from that stuff, shortly after it hit the market. All of the ammo I had was very clean with no signs of getting wet or tarnish of any sort.

I pulled the powder, which had a burn rate right around IMR3031/IMR4064. The charge weights varied by as much as 3 grains. The bullets were excellent 172gr boat tails with around a grain difference.

The powder that was salvaged was clean, smelled good and minimally dusty. That is to be expected with salvaged powder.

I saved all of that powder because IMHO it was fine. It was. I'm talking about several pounds of a very useful powder here and I wasn't about to throw it away without testing it first.

I've used up most of that powder, traded some for other things but all of it burned well and gave surprisingly consistent velocities with weighed charges.

I gave the brass to a fellow that used it for casting decorative trinkets.

OP, you likely only have slightly over 8000 grains of powder there, slightly over a pound.

The charges in my ammo averaged 41 grains.

If that powder doesn't have a sharp, acidic odor or rusty dust, I would save it and shoot it. Still it's only a pound +. I had close to 20 pounds and I'm just to frugal to throw it away if it's still working properly.

I found that using IMR4064 specs was safe and consistent with predicted manual results.
 
green said:
The POF ammo was loaded with cordite and flat base Mk7 bullets.
Click to expand...

Not the stuff I bought. But I believe most of it was. Not only that, the bullets had residue from a dark black sealant on the inside of the necks. I didn't save any of the brass but I still have a few hundred of the bullets.

Your post got me thinking so I went and had a look. Definitely boat tails and the powder is of the extruded type.

I ran into different types of propellant with the 8x63 Swede surplus as well. Two different types of powder, same bullets though.
 
green said:
bearhunter
What is the headstamp on the ammo you disassembled?
Click to expand...

My bad, you were right. NOT POF. I sincerely apologize.

The boat tail bullets were from another batch of Mk8z I pulled, so was the powder.

I checked the other drawer and found the POF bullets with one case for reference. You're right, flat base, exposed lead core. Case marked POF 5 7 66, so Mk7 1966 and the cordite strands were still in it.

Again, my apologies.
 
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