S&B 7.62x54R Brass = Crap?

[Rory McCanuck]

Normally, you don't want to trim your brass shorter than the "Trim to" length in your manual. Its usually 0.01" less than the Max length. In your case (pardon the pun) 10 thou won't eliminate all the cracks.
A general rule is you want the neck to be one caliber long, that will give you enough beef to have a consistent pull force to get the bullet moving. The neck is normally about 0.350" long, you could take it down to 0.300" and still have enought neck tension. A 300 WinMag has about a .270" neck, and the 300 Savage 0.220" and they seem to do alright.

Because there is a little bit of a gap, when you fire these short rounds there might be a ring of carbon build-up. This isn't a problem until you go to fire full length brass. Full length brass may not have enough room to expand and release the bullet, this pinching may cause very high pressures. So long as you take a brush to the chamber before switching to full length brass there won't be any problems.


I've thought about you pulling them down, annealing and re-assembling. This will also give you the chance to even out the powder charges. I pulled down 40 of my S&B rounds because the accuracy honked, and found the powder weights varied by a bit more than a full grain. This is also when I learned that ~46.8gr of their powder will give nice coverage on a 200sqft room's floor.

I'm not sure how I feel about annealing a primed case, though. I don't know if the heat would migrate down without dunking it in water, and dunking hot brass in water might steam the primer. Decapping and re-priming would be the safe bet.

Of course, new brass would eliminate a whole bunch of fooling around.

 

[BC604]

Normally, you don't want to trim your brass shorter than the "Trim to" length in your manual. Its usually 0.01" less than the Max length. In your case (pardon the pun) 10 thou won't eliminate all the cracks.
A general rule is you want the neck to be one caliber long, that will give you enough beef to have a consistent pull force to get the bullet moving. The neck is normally about 0.350" long, you could take it down to 0.300" and still have enought neck tension. A 300 WinMag has about a .270" neck, and the 300 Savage 0.220" and they seem to do alright.

Because there is a little bit of a gap, when you fire these short rounds there might be a ring of carbon build-up. This isn't a problem until you go to fire full length brass. Full length brass may not have enough room to expand and release the bullet, this pinching may cause very high pressures. So long as you take a brush to the chamber before switching to full length brass there won't be any problems.

Thank you for the explanation. I don't think this will work in my case, the necks are cracked sometimes half way down, on others
the cracks are much lower. Ill just use this brass to practice annealing/resizing and then dispose of them.

I've thought about you pulling them down, annealing and re-assembling. This will also give you the chance to even out the powder charges. I pulled down 40 of my S&B rounds because the accuracy honked, and found the powder weights varied by a bit more than a full grain. This is also when I learned that ~46.8gr of their powder will give nice coverage on a 200sqft room's floor.

You must have hardwood or lino as flooring.

I'm not sure how I feel about annealing a primed case, though. I don't know if the heat would migrate down without dunking it in water, and dunking hot brass in water might steam the primer. Decapping and re-priming would be the safe bet.

Of course, new brass would eliminate a whole bunch of fooling around.

I was not planning to anneal the primed cases. I have read that it its possible to decap live primers.
If that doesn't work, ill just put some water in the case and push the primer out.
And most importantly, I will not buy S&B ammo in calibers I'm trying to reload.