old .303 british ammo

[StarMetal]

Bruce,

My old 303 ammo is marked DA IV which I believe to have been made at Dominion Arsenal up in Canada. It has the nickle cupro round nose. Even the exposed lead core at the base of the bullet is marked DA.

Joe

[Texasflyboy]

The two on the left are Iraqi and the one on the right (POF) is Pakistani Ordnance Factory.

Second that. Have both of the same in my .303 stash.

[Ricochet]

I've pulled a bullet out of a 1940s (I don't have it now to check the headstamp) .303 British military round and found that overpowder wad over the Cordite. I remember it having a fabric-like pattern on the surface. I ended up firing it to get the wad and powder sticks out. (I was making a dummy round.) Like Joe said, the cases were primed and loaded before the bottleneck was formed.

[StarMetal]

I've pulled a bullet out of a 1940s (I don't have it now to check the headstamp) .303 British military round and found that overpowder wad over the Cordite. I remember it having a fabric-like pattern on the surface. I ended up firing it to get the wad and powder sticks out. (I was making a dummy round.) Like Joe said, the cases were primed and loaded before the bottleneck was formed.

John,

You described the wad that was in mine to a T. It was fabric like and kind of reminded me of, for lack of better description, like a old printed circuit board, but much softer.

My best friend and I use to use the cordite strings for fuses in our various black powder escapades. One would burn for 13 seconds. If we need more time we taped more strings of it together. I remember when you burn a string of it in the open air it leaves a residue on the surface of what it burned on that you couldn't easily get off. Definitely not an ash or carbon.

Joe

[PAT303]

The over powder wad had graphite imbedded in it to coat the bore to protect against throat erosion.Both cordite and the glycerine based nitro celulose powders burn at very high temps and ''wash out'' barrels.Almost all 303 ammo had them and the bullets had fillers made from aluminium,cane fibre,cardboard and kapok from coconuts,if they didn't the weight would be around 190grns. Pat

[StarMetal]

The over powder wad had graphite imbedded in it to coat the bore to protect against throat erosion.Both cordite and the glycerine based nitro celulose powders burn at very high temps and ''wash out'' barrels.Almost all 303 ammo had them and the bullets had fillers made from aluminium,cane fibre,cardboard and kapok from coconuts,if they didn't the weight would be around 190grns. Pat

Pat,

The cards in the ammo I had were brown and didn't have anything in them. They left nothing on your fingers and were not slippery. I even tore or cut some up to see their composition. Perhaps some other wads were used too such as you describe.

Joe

[Ricochet]

The wad I saw was brown and shiny.

The light filler material in the nose caused the bullets to be unstable on impact and tumble, causing much greater damage. We fired some of those into soft dirt. All that I found had tumbled sideways and disintegrated, leaving the pointy ogive with the hard aluminium (it was British) insert as the only intact remnant.

[StarMetal]

The wad I saw was brown and shiny.

The light filler material in the nose caused the bullets to be unstable on impact and tumble, causing much greater damage. We fired some of those into soft dirt. All that I found had tumbled sideways and disintegrated, leaving the pointy ogive with the hard aluminium (it was British) insert as the only intact remnant.

John,

I'm beginning to wonder if we had the same ammo. My card wad was shiny too.

Joe

[smlekid]

the MkVII and MkVIIz used the same bullet type 174gr flatbase the MKVIIIz used a boattail bullet which was only to be used in MG's I have spoken to a Korean vet who told me the MkVIIIz worked fine in there Mk111 rifles

[nicholst55]

I bought a bunch of .303 ammo from Sportsmen's Guide a few years ago - mostly '40s and 50s RG and Kynoch. I pulled down the worst of it to reuse the bullets, and wondered why I had problems obtaining enough neck tension to keep some of them in place. Then I miked all the bullets and found that some of them are only .306' diameter! No wonder they a) won't stay in place, and b) won't hit squat when they do fire!

Has anyone else encountered this?

[PAT303]

Pat,

The cards in the ammo I had were brown and didn't have anything in them. They left nothing on your fingers and were not slippery. I even tore or cut some up to see their composition. Perhaps some other wads were used too such as you describe.

Joe

Maybe they are just straight over powder wads,the graphite ones used to leave a black coating on the bore and like moly shooters either liked it or not.The graphite was never used with 4740 powder but during war time they could have done anything,production was the only concern. Pat

[Shiloh]

Free Mercury from mercuric primers amalgamate with the brass, rendering it useless. It will probably break if sized. Old black powder cases lasted a bit longer from the carbon residue of the burnt powder and the pressures were lower. The high pressures that smokeless propellant cartridges operate at, drive the now freed mercury deep into the brass.

Shiloh

[robertbank]

What Pat said. We still get lots of WW11 ammo up here and I just shoot it off. Stuff is very accurate or at least as accurate as the rifles will allow. The Cdn. Rangers still carry the LE #4, although rumour has it the guns will be replaced relatively soon by a bolt actioned rifle in .308. Some say the Remington. I gues finding decent LE in volume is getting harder and harder along with parts issues.

Take Care

Bob

[StarMetal]

Maybe they are just straight over powder wads,the graphite ones used to leave a black coating on the bore and like moly shooters either liked it or not.The graphite was never used with 4740 powder but during war time they could have done anything,production was the only concern. Pat

Pat,

Probably true with the war going on. No doubt lots of variations. These cards were just that, over the powder cards.

By the way I pulled one of the bullets when my wife and I first were married and drilled a small hole sideways through it to put it on her keychain. It's still there after over 30 some years. She liked it from day one because she liked guns & stuff, and it's a bright shiny bullet being nickle cupro jacketed.

Joe

[PAT303]

I wish I had a wife like that.I anneal old .303 cases before resizing,we still shoot alot of 303 wildcats here,25/303's are very popular and if you size without annealing they split on the first firing,anneal first and then size or reload if staying 303 and they last for a long time. Pat

[PAT303]

I bought a bunch of .303 ammo from Sportsmen's Guide a few years ago - mostly '40s and 50s RG and Kynoch. I pulled down the worst of it to reuse the bullets, and wondered why I had problems obtaining enough neck tension to keep some of them in place. Then I miked all the bullets and found that some of them are only .306' diameter! No wonder they a) won't stay in place, and b) won't hit squat when they do fire!

Has anyone else encountered this?

We had great amounts of South African 303 ammo here once and the crimp need's to be seen to be believed,it was so deep you could not get rid of it after resizing the case,it wasn't at the top but half way down the neck.It was deep enough that I'm sure it raised pressures as alot of people had trouble with it getting stuck in the chamber after firing. Pat

[stubshaft]

We had great amounts of South African 303 ammo here once and the crimp need's to be seen to be believed,it was so deep you could not get rid of it after resizing the case,it wasn't at the top but half way down the neck.It was deep enough that I'm sure it raised pressures as alot of people had trouble with it getting stuck in the chamber after firing. Pat

I bought a bunch of those at a gun show. They were almost as bad as the old stake crimp. Ended up shooting it in my 2 groove MK 5 and throwing the cases away.