Thread: Resurgence of interest in the old "Three Oh"?

Originally Posted by Scout

Lol @grandpamac, thank you for that, yes I think it is the case to, the neck wasn't split until fired but for sure CAC are the worst for that & as you say even later sporting rounds, not normally a danger like a ruptured case head I think ?

A bit of trivia -

Interesting comments re CAC quality. When I left school I joined a fullbore club. At the time we were using CAC 58 ammo which was excellent for accuracy. Club members paid 18/6 for 75 round which was about 3 pence a shot! This was just pre decimal currency. I recently gave away a part tub of 75 rounds of this vintage and it was still excellent with no splitting issues when shot.

When I was in the fullbore club we had an annual service rifle type shoot. For this the army gave us ex WW2 ammo (this was back in the days when civilian marksmenship was encouraged). I cannot remember exactly the headstamp marking of the ammo (I don’t think it was CAC) but it came in sealed tins and was absolutely terrible accuracy wise. No splits though as the ammo was still quite young (like me then ) at that stage.

A few years ago, when I still had my No 4 Fulton, I bought a lot of milsurp 303 from SAI. It had what appeared to be Arabic markings on the headstamp. My first (and only) outing with it I shot a stunning 5 shot group, then continued on to 10 shots at which point the groups disintegrated. On checking the bore it was plated from one end to the other with Cu. It took me around a day to remove the Cu.

Moving on to around 1968/69 fullbore clubs started to change to 7.62x52. The ammo was manufactured by CAC. To this day the brass alloy they used for cases is still held in high esteem it is also quite weight consistent. I know of a few FTR shooters still using it. I still have a large amount but now use Lapua. May the CAC drag it out and anneal it and use it again.