Oldest Cases You Have Reloaded?

[leadman]

A few years ago my friend that lives in Texas was visiting us in Az. and he gave me some brass, primers, boolit mold, and load data he had bought at an estate sale. He thought I should have it as he did not have anything that shot this cartridge.
I didn't either, but last year I found a rifle that shot this cartridge so I bought it. I bought some new brass from Graf's and have been shooting it.

Today I deprimed a box of the ammo he gave me and noticed the dates on the rim of some of the brass, 5-86, 7-86, and 4-87. These years are from the 1800s!!! The brass is 11.15 X 60R, or what is now called the 43 Mauser.

The brass is berdan primed but the primers he gave me are the proper size berdan but they are now obsolete. Have about 100 of these. When they are gone I am going to convert the cases to shotgun primers or large rifle.

There is one cardboard 20 round box that has a reloading data sticker on it. The last loading of these cases was in 1964. The guy that originally owned these had written to the NRA to get load data and a letter was sent back to him.

I am having to use a very small drill to clean out the flash holes of carbon and other hard debris. When that is done I will prime a case and see if the primers are still good. They are in a round metal tin from Scotch tape so should be ok.
If the primers are good I will load these with black powder an Lyman 348gr .446 boolit and see what happens. I have already annealed the necks as I was making a dummy round and the neck split about 3/8".

So what old cases have you loaded?

[justingrosche]

Early 1900's with the 22 Savage High Power is earliest for me.

[Linstrum]

The earliest I have reloaded is 1939, in both 7.62x54R Russian and 8x57JS Mauser. The 7.62x54R brass was VPT from Finland, and the 8mm Mauser was Turkish made in Nazi Germany. I converted both from Berdan to Boxer.

I have some 1880 .45-70 brass, but it is going to stay unloaded at this point, mainly because I don't own a .45-70 rifle (I know, shame on me for not owning a classic caliber rifle, but I don't own a .30-30, either).

rl 1031

[Reg]

Have played with a number of 32-20 and 25-20 Single shot cases easly going back to around 1900. Results were very mixed. One thing I noticed from all of them was that the brass seemed to have hardened or chrystalised over time and no amount of annealing seemed to help. Some split with the first firing, some length wise and some radially resulting in having to remove the split section from the chamber.
It's generally best to not use the early primers as quite often the priming mixture contained mercury which will attack the brass and bore both .
In some cases the early powder had become solid in the shell both black and the early smokeless making removal very difficult.
On some of the real early folded head 25-20 SS cases, the primer seemed to be of a odd size. It was almost a small rifle but a new small rifle primer could be tapped loose in the case by tapping it at a slight angle on the wooden bench top. They would stay in during firing but did show leakage from the pocket.
Went to a auction and got around 200 of the 25-20's once. Wound up selling them off rather than messing with them. They brought a very good price and used the money to go out and buy new manufacture brass. The Bertram brass I bought didn't have the best reputation but I could still then and now get far more reloads out of each case than I could with the early brass. After firing thousands of rounds in several different rifles the best number of reloads I could get with the older brass was 8 to 10 when they became unservacable and some of the Bertram is still going strong after 30 and in a few cases, more. All this with a very light 5 gn. loading.
I like to fire the older guns and if all I could get were the older cases, then thats what I would use but if I could buy or reform newer brass, then thats the route I would much prefer to go.

:drinks:

[MtGun44]

7x57 UMC about 1902 vintage. Normal large rifle primers. They work fine.

Bill

[dale2242]

I have reloaded 45-70 balloon head, issue, 1872 FA brass.
Yes I used Black Powder for my 1884 Trapdoor......dale

[Reload3006]

1920s mil-surp 30-06

[gnoahhh]

1890's vintage .30/40 Krags, tin coated cases. I pulled the bullets, dumped the powder and de-capped the original mercuric primers (on those that didn't already have split necks). Got a helluva lot of reloadings with them with extremely light cast bullet loads. It was more of a nostalgia kind of a thing than a necessity, but fun nonetheless. The collectors value today would far exceed the utility value and would prevent me from doing it again.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

WOW,
all you guys have me beat.
I've loaded some mil. surp. boxer style 8mm Mauser with dates of 42 and 44. (1942 and 1944).
I don't know the manufacturer.
Jon

[Harter66]

LC42 06' and FA1958 38 special head stamped 57. Looks like nice new stuff by comparison.

[Freischütz]

I've loaded some WWI 30/06 and 45 ACP brass. I never had a problem with it.

I did have problems some commercial 30/06 brass made right after the WWI. I believe it was Peters. Lots of cases developed little splits just in front of the solid head.

[1Shirt]

Mil 30-40 Krag, don't remember headstamp, but it could not have been much beyond the 1920's.
1Shirt!:coffeecom

[6.5 mike]

30-40 Krag FA headstamp 1909

[429421Cowboy]

WOW i'm way behind you guys, oldest i've loaded is Norma .44 brass claimed to be from the '60's by the friend that gave it to me. It's pretty neat to hear about this stuff, i'm a nut for old cartridges, brass any of that. funny thing is i was just reading one of my many Jack O'Connor books and he mentioned the .43 Mauser round.
I also was quite interested by a box of .25/20 Win ammo i found in a friends shop last week made by Savage with a Savage headstamp, i had never seen and wasn't aware that Savage had ever produced cartridges.

[gnoahhh]

30-40 Krag FA headstamp 1909

I have a box of FA 03 and a box of FA 06 .30/40 that I'm keeping intact because those were the years my grandparents were born. But sometimes I cast a covetous eye toward them...

[firefly1957]

Same as a couple people above on 45acp & '06 I have good brass dated in the teens I have some old brass in .351 and 44 spec with no dates but is very old the 44's have balloon style heads and should not be reloaded...I wonder were I put them?

A lot of these old cases split because they were loaded with mercury primers which attacks the zinc in the brass splitting case.

[JMtoolman]

Back in the 60's I would buy 45/70 orig. black powder loads from the 1800's. Pull the bullets and pry out the hardened black powder. Decap without fireing, and anneal the necks. Then I would reload them with new primers, powder and cast lead bullets. Worked great! Can't remember any of them splitting. I think I still have some of the old cases in a box somewhere. I had eight or ten different manufactures of brass. The toolman.

[cdet69]

38-40 brass from around 1903. At least that was what was written on the box.

[mongo]

I got a bunch of SA-42 30-06 brass. I was going to load them up for my M-1 but was told that it would be dangerous as the origional priming contained mercury and weakened the brass. If thats not the case, Ill load them up this weekend.....

[Linstrum]

The US Military has not used mercuric primers for probably well over 100 years. Hatcher's Notebook probably mentions when we quit using it. Except for the .30 carbine that MUST use non-corrosive ammo, our World War Two ammo was loaded using chlorate primers which is highly corrosive. I have used corrosive ammo, but it is a PITA to clean out a Garand gas system and barrel, so I don't use it for that. The US Military switched to non-corrosive ammo in 1953-1954. During the transition period the corrosive ammo was color coded with green dye around the primers, non-corrosive with red dye around the primers.

rl 1033

[Adam10mm]

.45 ACP WCC 1986 Match for me.

My uncle has some .45 ACP WCC that's stamped 1963 that he's still reloading. He purchased the ammo as surplus in 1964.

[KCSO]

I reload civil war Gallager and Burnside ammo.

[Baron von Trollwhack]

A gallon paint can full of 1890s FA tin plated 45-70. I wish I knew then what..............

Geepers! I still have WWII 45 brass in my loaded, RTG, and fired buckets.

BvT

[Valley Forge]

Wow, I just just put up a hundred '06 cases dated '41 and I thought that was pretty old! They were forty years old when I fired them for the first time and this will be their 3rd time around.