Reusing 8x56R milsurp brass.

kjohn

kjohn

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Well, I finally got around to drilling out a centre hole for boxer primers. The only thing I could find locally was a sturdy little IRWIN 3/32' bit that is factory fitted in to a hex base, meant to be used in a drill. The 3/32" hole is a tad big. The tricky part is starting the bit between the two small holes, but I got 13 usable examples now. I also have two that I drilled out to accept shotgun primers. The existing primer pocket works fine for large rifle primers.

I will be using light loads with cast bullets in these cases.

I have a small cross sliding vise coming for my drill press. Hoping it will make things easier for converting berdan primed milsurp brass to either boxer primer or shotgun primer.

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Glad you had success. I ended up buying a bag of Prvi brass and I use that with my M95 Steyr. I read online that 7.62x54R brass can be resized, but I have never tried that.
 
wasa said:
Glad you had success. I ended up buying a bag of Prvi brass and I use that with my M95 Steyr. I read online that 7.62x54R brass can be resized, but I have never tried that.
Click to expand...

I have resized 7.62x54R into 8x56R, it works but leaves the case that has a very short neck, by 2 mm of course.
To do this I fired the 7.62x54r out of the M95 to start the fireforming process, great muzzle flash for sure, but not dangerous, the Austrians did it during WW I with captured ammo from the Russians..
When TradeEx was still in business I broke down and bought, very expensive PPU brass and bullets for my Steyr M95, works way better.
 
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Tried that a couple times years ago. There are a lot more things available now so that it shouldn't be necessary very often. The 7.62x54 route is probably going to be much easier and a short neck isn't a big dea.

If you are going to continue drilling maybe look at getting a small end mill rather than the regular drill bit and with the vice in the drill press it will be much less likely to try to go off center.
 
I think it was probably from Amazon, or maybe from somewhere else - some years ago I had got a set of "centre" drills - very thick shanks - from really tiny to not so tiny drill ends - I use them mostly in my lathe to create centers for the live or dead centers - also for making a place to start a hole with normal drill bit, instead of a centre punch. Maybe see if you can find tiny centre drill for what you are doing - else a spring loaded centre punch? Drill bit will not "walk away" if it has a dimple to start in ...

Besides drilling a centered flash hole, did you close up the Berdan holes, or just leave them?? From Internet, it says "normal" large flash hole brass is circa 0.080" - a bit more than 5/64th (so, as you wrote, a bit less than 3/32"); and "small flash hole" brass is typically less than 0.060". It was alleged at one time that the smaller hole gave better ignition to the powder - not so sure if that ever panned out or not. I never have tried any small flash hole brass - all my de-capping pins are for the "normal" larger holes.
 
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Some years ago I came into a pile of 8x57 brass - Portugeuse military, I think - I had fired some and was considering to reload the brass. Certainly did not like what I read about the commotion to get the Berdan primers out - I did not buy the RCBS tool to do that, then, could not find that size Berdan primers to buy anyway, and I had no tooling to press new ones back in. From Internet, a guy had made a post "anvil" - he would set the empty Berdan primer case on that - then use like a flat ended punch and swage the Berdan bump to be flat - at same time that apparently squished the Berdan primer holes to be closed. As I recall, the brass he was using had Berdan primers that were larger diameter than normal Large Rifle primers - he made some copper or brass sleeves that would take up the space - and used common primer pocket prep tools to get final dimension. Of course, he had drilled out a new, centred flash hole. At that time, I discovered that TradeEx sold PPU boxer primed 8x57 brass, so I got that - I never did go back to do anything with the fired 8x57 Berdan primed stuff.
 
Potashminer: Man, you are full of good ideas. Mashing the anvil in Berdan cases - for the win! I’ve got lots of milsurp brass to practice on. :p I finally set up the floor model drill press that I bought years ago, and got my little cross vise dearly yesterday. Production will be ramping up soon! My plan is to make some light loads to shoot at our indoor range. We have an excellent backstop, so no worries about lead coming back.
 
kjohn - apparently, I seldom have "original" ideas - usually something that I had read or saw some time previously - as in this instance. I do not know if that Internet guy's process will even work, but was something that I was serious to try, until I found out I could buy boxer primed commercial brass. Good luck! I hope that works out for you!!
 
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