Spanish .308 milsurp

[kjohn]

Does anyone recall the Spanish ammo that was widely sold here in Canada, then a notice came out that some of it was possibly defective and should all be returned?

IIRC, there were reports of the odd cartridge producing extremely high pressures. Well, I was just reading a thread here about pulling bullets. My parts man and I pulled the bullets from all the stuff I had and reloaded it, using the same powder and bullets.

We weighed several powder charges from different boxes of the questionable ammo, then used the average weight to charge the reloads. We never did come across any powder charges that didn't seem right. We kept a good eye on each charge, dumping it in a clean white dish before adding it to the bulk.

We used two single stage presses with collet pullers, then switched dies and seated the whole works with a crimp as close to the original as we could get. We did several hundred that way.

 

[maple_leaf_eh]

If you are referring to cartridges headstamped CBC, it is the stuff to approach cautiously. It is Brazillean, modified by the Chileans and flogged in North America, where its powder was found to be a dangerous mix of pistol and rifle powders. If the stuff is stamped anything else, you just worked your arse off for nothing.

 

[kjohn]

Sorry to disappoint, but it was CBC....

 

[bearhunter]

That stuff is bad news. My shooting buddy ruined a nice mauser and ended up with a piece of brass in his eye because of it. We bought the ammunition from International in 1992. They paid for all expenses, including medical, rifle, shipping and handling as well as a nice settlement for distress. They didn't have to be prodded to do this but did so voluntarily.
I kept about a hundred rounds of this stuff and pulled the bullets. I don't know if it was the powder or the black sealant used on the bullets at the case neck that caused the problem. International said that the stuff had been stored at extreme high temperatures for to long.
All of the bullets pulled were very uniform in weight, boat tails and accurate when reloaded into their original cases with new powder.

The boxes were marked in Portuguese, "REFORMADO". Pretty obvious that they were reloads.

 

[Ganderite]

I pulled and reloaded a half million of these rounds and got certification for the ammo from the feds.

I read the legal reports generated by a ballistics lab that figured out what was wrong. Some of the rounds had a fair quanity of pistol powder. Both the main rifle powder and the pistol powder were ball powders, so seeing the pistol powder was impossible.

We pulled the bullets, dumped the powder into metal garbage cans and rolled them around to mix up all the powder. The total amount of pistol powder was very small.

The secondary problem was that the cases were over-anealed in the neck. necks were dead soft and had little neck tension. The REFORMADO (or what ever it said) were rounds that had been run through a neck crimper in an attempt to increase neck tension. Did not work.

We replaced the military bullets with Sierra match bullets and the result (with CBC powder) was excellent. I still use this reclaimed powder.

 

[maple_leaf_eh]

Ref Ganderite:

I can attest that Gold Cross ammo is quite reliable (although I hadn't seen the story about the necks being poorly annealed). It is one-way brass unfortunately.