my adventures in converting and using x39 brass

[StoneHendge]

im down for a few days , broke the depriming pin on my lee die , got 4 replacements on the way from lee already 2 for my gren die , and 2 for my cm die just incase

Stick a flashlight in each case - once you find one Berdan you'll recognize them all! I think I had 3 - all with 1985 headstamp. I always decap separately. Seems to help save cases when necking down - I don't need to worry about the force that suddenly gets applied to it when the primer clears. I also don't to worry about having a decap pin on each die.

[mel]

Stick a flashlight in each case - once you find one Berdan you'll recognize them all! I think I had 3 - all with 1985 headstamp. I always decap separately. Seems to help save cases when necking down - I don't need to worry about the force that suddenly gets applied to it when the primer clears. I also don't to worry about having a decap pin on each die.

was my fault i wasnt paying attention which pile i was grabbing brass from it didnt actually break the pin it bent it , only thing i dislike about my lee dies is the expander and decaper are one piece , i didnt even contact lee just went to there sight and ordered 2 of each for my lee dies and they gave me one of each free, already been shipped an have tracking

[tdbru]

Mel,
a couple of decades back, i picked up a Lyman decapping die. if i recall it either had a hardened steel decapper rod or a tungsten decapper rod. it has, by the way, accidently decapped some Berdan Nato 7.62x51 once or twice. punched a nice hole through the shellcase bottom. and didn't bend or break the decapper at all. i use it all the time. i do not know if Lyman still makes it, but if they do, consider it. the decapper rod has not broken or bent in a couple of decades of service. then if a whoops happens, and a berdan case gets decapped, it's not a show stopper while you wait for another decapping rod to show up in the mail. you just go "whoops" and check a little harder for berdan cases to exclude and keep on keeping on.
-tdbru

[mel]

im still ok ive got 50 pcs of the lrp brass ready to ff , an ive got about 250 pcs of the normal grendel brass all sized and preped ready to load , my varmint season is over with now , only thing left i have to do is fill my deer tags, and nighttime coyote hunting so dont need a whole lot of ammo atm.

[StoneHendge]

Was finally able to get to the bench today and got about 70 pieces almost ready to load. I'm going to use CFE because I've pretty much given up on it for accuracy work due to its temp sensitivity and the temps here in Phoenix and I probably have 5+ lbs. I'm going to be using Speer 80 gr Hot Cors. Hornady runs 27 minimum 31 max for the 6 ARC for 80s. 25 grains sound right? Maybe 24.5 due to temps which will be in the 80s in the morning and get to the low 90s. I don't care about velocity - I'll just be shooting a big rectangular plate offhand. (Edit add: I've got 0.03" more case length than the 6ARC in my 243 LBC)

I only had 2 pieces of remington brass. The mouths were in good shape, but the brass is so thin that shoulders would rather crumple than the necks get sized down. That didn't really happen much with the rest of it unless the mouths were beat up - which was the case with a lot of them - those AKs really beat the crap out of brass.

[mel]

Was finally able to get to the bench today and got about 70 pieces almost ready to load. I'm going to use CFE because I've pretty much given up on it for accuracy work due to its temp sensitivity and the temps here in Phoenix and I probably have 5+ lbs. I'm going to be using Speer 80 gr Hot Cors. Hornady runs 27 minimum 31 max for the 6 ARC for 80s. 25 grains sound right? Maybe 24.5 due to temps which will be in the 80s in the morning and get to the low 90s. I don't care about velocity - I'll just be shooting a big rectangular plate offhand. (Edit add: I've got 0.03" more case length than the 6ARC in my 243 LBC)

I only had 2 pieces of remington brass. The mouths were in good shape, but the brass is so thin that shoulders would rather crumple than the necks get sized down. That didn't really happen much with the rest of it unless the mouths were beat up - which was the case with a lot of them - those AKs really beat the crap out of brass.

i started at minus 3.7g of my normal load with the 123's , 2.7g lower would have been fine , that being said go as low as u can and save the powder accuracy is going to suck till they are fire formed specially after the aneling after die forming messes with neck tension

[JSH]

Anyone weighing cases, heavy cases will more times than not have less internal volume. That may well shrink groups, rather than pumping them all together.
Even same headstamp brass will vary.
I was always laying with a 17HH early this year. All Hornady brass all head stamped the same. Yet there is a variance of 5-6 grains in case weight, that is an enormous amount when dealing with small cases.

May well be worth a check on a few of your reformed brass.

[StoneHendge]

Stone Hendge's adventure continues also. My plan was to use my stash of 1800 or so Federal 210s. Seating required way too much force. Like it would barely go in and squeeze as hard as I can with two hands force (I have set off a primer before trying to seat in an LC case I must have missed swaging - a bit startling to say the least - always wear eye protection!). Figured I'd ream on my lyman case prep center. That didn't work on a couple of testers. Figured I'd try swaging with my RCBS Press mounted swager. Nope. Then i figured I'd check the world wide web about something I remembered and wallah! Federal 210s have a diameter of .2120" while CCI 200s have a diameter of .2112".

https://www.accurateshooter.com/technical-articles/primers-and-pressure-analysis/

Just so happens that I have 1200+ of CCI 200s and they fit! This is positive in my eyes since it sounds like loosening primer pockets are the limiting factor for 7.62x39 brass, so I figure I can swap over from CCIs to Feds after a couple of firings and maybe get a few more cycles than expected.

Back to the bench!

Edit Add: Checked the pockets on the handful of dummies I had made and the Go side of my swage gauge didn't fit in the majority of them.

[StoneHendge]

2 more observations.

This brass is really soft. As in really soft. I had to trim about a dozen and camphered and deburred them all. I normally get a 0.001" reduction per revolution with my Hornady trim pro with virtually all my brass. With this stuff I got 0.002" - 0.0025" per. With my normal brass it generally takes 15 seconds on my Lyman Case Prep Center to smooth the outside of the month after trimming - usually 5 seconds each in 3 different positions. With this stuff it took 5 seconds total in one position.

Bent rims. I had a few pancakes loading and upon inspection some had slightly bent rims. I'm using a 6mm PPC seating die and I'm maxed out on how low the seating stem can go and have extremely limited clearance for the shoulder. I'm guessing the bent rims put it off center while seating and when the shoulder contacted the die, the soft brass gave in. I also checked my crushed brass from sizing and about half had visibly bent rims. Misalignment going into the die probably caused or helped crush the soft brass. Some looked fine but those were likely crushed by abused case mouths. Since they are piston guns, the extractor does start yanking on the rim as soon as the gas hits the port in an AK.....

The PPU brass is THIN. Bullets slipped in during seating as easily as Willie Brown slipped in during Kamala Harris's job interview.

I'm hoping the Geco works and may go the new Geco route if it does.

Ready to rumble!

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[mel]

i havent done anything last few days my bike has had my full attention, that and i know my 28 inch barrel is soon to be on the way so ill do all my ff'ing in that barrel to also get my breakin done at the same time

[tdbru]

Mel,
that's some serious motor rebuilding on your dirt bike. hope it runs well for you for a long time so you don't have to mess with that anymore.
-tdbru

[mel]

Mel,
that's some serious motor rebuilding on your dirt bike. hope it runs well for you for a long time so you don't have to mess with that anymore.
-tdbru

unfortunatly not theese 4 stroke mx motors are very high matinence .this motor is a screamer with a 13,5k rev limiter, really hard on valve trains and piston rings, the newer mx bike motors arent as bad though. im actually going to sell this one and try to find a 250kx to replace it the 2 strokes were much cheaper to ride hard and maintain, i can deal with a 150$ cyl and piston replacement on a 2 stroke every year , but damn this 4 stroke is exspensive to overhual 400$ piston and cyl kits 700$ valve trains etc etc , only reason ive had this 05kxf so long is its the best handling bike ive ever been on, beats up the 450's on tight courses and trails

if u think a firearm hobby is exspensive try dirtbikes lol

[mel]

my lee die parts arrive tommorow so ill be getting back on this , i ended up picking up 105 pieces of ppu lrp brass as well to try out

[StoneHendge]

[StoneHendge]

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