Getting the most out of surplus ammo?

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TheWhole9Yards

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Recently I've been working on tightening up 100yrd groups with my mosins and SKS. I think i've reached the point where my surplus ammo isn't cutting it in the consistency dept (yes im a perfect shooter now and blaming the ammo). Im not dumb enough to expect match grade ammo from a spam can, nor do I want to buy any!

So my question is, is there a method of weighing/measuring my surplus ammo to try and improve my hole punching? I've read about guys doing this with bulk .22LR with some success. I'm hoping to sort through my next spam can and come up with some more consistent ammo.
 
You would be better off pulling bullets and making you have a consistant powder measure across the rounds and reseat the bullet, and weigh your bullets as they can varey up to 3 grain or so difference, I still wouldn't expect to ever get MOA out of surplus though, unless it's gp11 Ammo
 
TheWhole9Yards said:
Recently I've been working on tightening up 100yrd groups with my mosins and SKS. I think i've reached the point where my surplus ammo isn't cutting it in the consistency dept (yes im a perfect shooter now and blaming the ammo). Im not dumb enough to expect match grade ammo from a spam can, nor do I want to buy any!

So my question is, is there a method of weighing/measuring my surplus ammo to try and improve my hole punching? I've read about guys doing this with bulk .22LR with some success. I'm hoping to sort through my next spam can and come up with some more consistent ammo.
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I like this idea! But I don't want to pull cartridges apart, I wonder if a sensitive weigh scale could get a little improvement over just taking what comes?
 
I've done it with .22lr and it turned cheap bulk ammo into mediocre ammo. Really all it did was get rid of the flyers without changing the size of the main group. For the amount of work I'd rather just buy better ammo. I also tried sorting by rim thickness, and by both at the same time. It helped a little but didn't make match ammo at all.

For centrefire ammo weight sorting isn't really done because you have no way of knowing what component (powder, case, bullet) is high or low. Two rounds that weigh the same can be quite different as one may have a touch more powder but slightly lighter bullet and the next can have a touch less powder but a slightly heavier case. You can give it a shot but I don't see it doing much.

One thing that used to be done was called Mexican-match ammo. The bullets would be pulled and replaced with a match bullet of the same weight over the same powder charge. This was done back in the old days when you could go to sponsored matches where they gave everyone surplus 7.62NATO or .30-06 ammo to use for the competition. I don't know how it'll work with something like 7.62x39 or x54R because the ammo is so much less consistent than US/NATO ammo in regard to more than just the bullets.
 
Craig0ry said:
You would be better off pulling bullets and making you have a consistant powder measure across the rounds and reseat the bullet, and weigh your bullets as they can varey up to 3 grain or so difference, I still wouldn't expect to ever get MOA out of surplus though, unless it's gp11 Ammo
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Dang, that makes sense
 
Craig0ry said:
You would be better off pulling bullets and making you have a consistant powder measure across the rounds and reseat the bullet, and weigh your bullets as they can varey up to 3 grain or so difference, I still wouldn't expect to ever get MOA out of surplus though, unless it's gp11 Ammo
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You can do this. But the biggest difference would be to pull the fmj combat bullet and seat one of the same weight/countour of better quality (like a match or hunting bullet). Watch for pressure signs and be careful--but you should be okay. I've had good results'
 
Robert Nicholson said:
I like this idea! But I don't want to pull cartridges apart, I wonder if a sensitive weigh scale could get a little improvement over just taking what comes?
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Not really, cuz you don't know if the weight difference is the bullet or the propellant.

I pulled a few dozen x39 bullets from a spam can a while back. Bullet weights varied from 119gr to 125gr. Don't recal the weight of the powder, but it varied by about 2 grains IIRC.

I evened out the powder and swapped the bullets for hornady SSTs. Each sst weighed in at exactly 123.0gr. Haven't had a chance to compare results yet though.
 
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