I have a bunch of Brazillian CBC 1975 7.62x51 that is apparently no good to shoot because it was loaded with a mix of pistol powder at the factory. I'm planning to pull the bullets, trash the powder and reload with a 125gr reduced load for my m14. Any problems with doing this? Any suggestions on powder?
Pulling/reloading CBC 75 7.62x51
- Thread starter McCDan
- Start date
I have pulled about 500,000 rounds of that ammo.
Pull the bullets. They come out easy because the necks are too soft.
Size the neck with the decapper rod removed, to give maximum neck tension.
Load with 40 gr of that powder and your 125gr bullet. Action will cycle just fine.
Save all the CBC powder and mix it up, in case there is some pistol powder.
CBC is laoded with either an extruded powder (about 3031 in speed) or a ball powder (about H335 in speed). Only the ball powder has the risk of some contamination. Mixing the ball powder from many rounds solves the risk issue. As I said, I pulled and reloaded a half million rounds of this. Or, actually, my son did.
I am still using some of that ball powder.
Pull the bullets. They come out easy because the necks are too soft.
Size the neck with the decapper rod removed, to give maximum neck tension.
Load with 40 gr of that powder and your 125gr bullet. Action will cycle just fine.
Save all the CBC powder and mix it up, in case there is some pistol powder.
CBC is laoded with either an extruded powder (about 3031 in speed) or a ball powder (about H335 in speed). Only the ball powder has the risk of some contamination. Mixing the ball powder from many rounds solves the risk issue. As I said, I pulled and reloaded a half million rounds of this. Or, actually, my son did.
I am still using some of that ball powder.
A factory loading machine has a powder thrower just like the one we use, except much larger. A factory would have several loading machines making the same ammo, which all gets mixed before packaging.
At some point someone added a container of ball pistol; powder to the ball rifle powder in one of the machines. The result was that a batch of thousands of rounds was contaminated by a few rounds that would have been loaded with 100% pistol powder. A guaranteed kaboom.
The odds of your handful of CBC ammo including a bad round is low. But if you do have one, the rifle will blow up.
The solution is to scrap the ammo, or at least scrap the powder. If you have a lot of the ammo, pull the bullets and mix the powder up, and then develop a load using the START load for H335.
At some point someone added a container of ball pistol; powder to the ball rifle powder in one of the machines. The result was that a batch of thousands of rounds was contaminated by a few rounds that would have been loaded with 100% pistol powder. A guaranteed kaboom.
The odds of your handful of CBC ammo including a bad round is low. But if you do have one, the rifle will blow up.
The solution is to scrap the ammo, or at least scrap the powder. If you have a lot of the ammo, pull the bullets and mix the powder up, and then develop a load using the START load for H335.
It is my understanding that there is perfectly good CBC 7.62x51, and then there is this bad batch with the powder problem. Is it marked "reengastada" or some such. Story is that it was remanufactured outside Brazil. Any truth to this?
