Thread: Anybody here successfully priming BERDAN for 303 British and / or 7.62 ?

@Kiwi Sapper love the Wanganui without an H
When we drove south we got to Bulls and Dad started raving about some barstool and his H I’m like what the is the old falla on about Because he now starts laughing as we are about to turn left with the over head sign to Wanganui above us (pointing right) they missed that one
Good luck with ya primers sounds easier than trying to take the H out

I've been loading 1970's Hirtenberger 7.62 NATO berdan primed brass for a few years now here and there. Also in the middle of getting going with 7.5 Swiss GP 11 early 1980's brass(brass is primed ready to load).

My interest in this came down to not wanting that beautiful brass to go to waste. I had heard a lot of negative comments on forums about Berdan brass but in the end I found it was not that big a deal. A lot of the success with it comes down to the right tools and berdan primers.

For resizing, no big deal, remove your decapping pin and resize as normal.

For depriming I saw people doing the whole hydraulic thing splashing water everywhere. Instead I bought the RCBS berdan decapping tool. These are not widely available but they are out there. Once you get it dialed in for that particular cartridge and a feel for the flick of the wrist you use to pop out the primer, it's an easy day. You might ruin a few anvils and the associated brass case getting it dialed in. Sometimes with the primer sealant you might find a primer being troublesome with a little extra effort required.

For removing the military primer crimp, the best solution I found was the Rock Solid Industries berdan military crimp cutter.

For priming, well one you need the right primer for the job which might take some research. There are two different kinds of 7.62 primers, one for 7.62x39, the other for 7.62 NATO and similar brass. To prime I use an older Lee primer hand tool. I had heard of people hacking these tools to add in a stop to prime to a certain depth, but what I found is a there is a lot of variation in anvils(especially as they get shot and reloaded several times) and brass, so I prime by feel. And that is the tricky part as you are seating a primer against an anvil. You can't just slam them in there like with a boxer primer.

Once you have them primed then it's the same as always.

I did back to back testing of the 7.62 brass boxer versus berdan. Same powder loads and as I recall there was a slight difference in velocity in favor of the boxer.

Lastly something to remember is berdan brass usually is not going to last as long as boxer brass due to the anvil getting hammered by the firing pin. But I figure if I get 4 or 5 loadings out of the brass then it did it's purpose and then someday end up at the metal recyclers.