3006guns
12-18-2013, 05:29 AM
I posted on this subject some months back and thought I'd update it and possibly give a word to the wise also.......
I have about 400 rounds of 7.5 x 54 French surplus ammo and it's good looking stuff but unfortunately about 85% of the primers are bad. There were so many misfires it began to get downright embarrassing at the range, so I developed a plan. First I'd pull all the bullets and salvage the powder, then deprime the cases and seat nice fresh Wolf Berdans. Reassemble the cartridges and bingo! Problem solved.
Alas, it was not to be. I tried the water hydraulic method and just got wet. I tried my Lachmiller Berdan removal tool, which has never failed me, and tore the tops off leaving the sides of the primer stuck in the pocket. In over forty years of reloading I've never had anything fight me so hard. I finally put all the brass aside to sulk for a couple of months. During that time I found an article regarding French military ammunition, and it seems they deliberately put a ring crimp around those primers so that there was NO chance of removing them without damage. Why? Well, it seem when the French were in both Indochina and northern Africa they were afraid insurgents would pick up the fired cases and reload them. Okay, so now I know why I couldn't get them out.
About this time, Graf and Sons had Privi 7.5 French brass on sale so I ordered 100. I loaded them with the pulled components and shot my MAS36 without a hiccup for the first time. Shoots pretty good too.....a keeper.
But what to do with all those nice, heavy brass cases? Well the price of brass is pretty good at the scrap yard but I had to fire off all those primers first for safety or they wouldn't take them. I did this little task yesterday in my shop by placing a length of 1/2" water pipe vertically in my vise. I then selected a case from the box and slid the correct shell holder over it. Then I lowered the case into the pipe until the shell holder rested on the end of the pipe. I ground an extra punch to the proper firing pin shape, lowered it through the hole in the middle of the shell holder and gave it a whack with a small hammer.
True to form, about 85% of the primers didn't make a sound through my earmuffs. The only way you could tell that it went off was to pull the case from the pipe and see if smoke issued from the end. If the primer DID go off in a normal fashion (rare) I'd simply slide the shell holder back and allow the case to fall through the pipe to a collection bucket on the floor. Pretty clever I thought.
Still with me? Good, because here comes the good part....roughly 30 of the primers exploded with such tremendous force that the punch was lifted out of the shell holder, accompanied by many bits of the primer. Most of the time the top of the primer was blown off and up through the hole in the shell holder, although ironically some of them deprimed beautifully. When it happened the first time I got a real smack on my fingers, along with black smudge marks but no skin punctures. I already had my earmuffs and glasses on but I put on gloves REAL quick. I finally discharged every single primer (or made sure they were dead) and they're ready for the scrapper.
The point of this whole exercise is this: old military ammo can vary in quality even if loaded in government arsenals. Each of those "strong" primers had too much compound in them in my opinion. On top of that, I did not have the primer properly supported as it would be in a rifle chamber, so the explosion blowing back through the shell holder is entirely my fault.
Anyway, I got them done and have nice fresh Privi cases to shoot. Viva' le France!
I have about 400 rounds of 7.5 x 54 French surplus ammo and it's good looking stuff but unfortunately about 85% of the primers are bad. There were so many misfires it began to get downright embarrassing at the range, so I developed a plan. First I'd pull all the bullets and salvage the powder, then deprime the cases and seat nice fresh Wolf Berdans. Reassemble the cartridges and bingo! Problem solved.
Alas, it was not to be. I tried the water hydraulic method and just got wet. I tried my Lachmiller Berdan removal tool, which has never failed me, and tore the tops off leaving the sides of the primer stuck in the pocket. In over forty years of reloading I've never had anything fight me so hard. I finally put all the brass aside to sulk for a couple of months. During that time I found an article regarding French military ammunition, and it seems they deliberately put a ring crimp around those primers so that there was NO chance of removing them without damage. Why? Well, it seem when the French were in both Indochina and northern Africa they were afraid insurgents would pick up the fired cases and reload them. Okay, so now I know why I couldn't get them out.
About this time, Graf and Sons had Privi 7.5 French brass on sale so I ordered 100. I loaded them with the pulled components and shot my MAS36 without a hiccup for the first time. Shoots pretty good too.....a keeper.
But what to do with all those nice, heavy brass cases? Well the price of brass is pretty good at the scrap yard but I had to fire off all those primers first for safety or they wouldn't take them. I did this little task yesterday in my shop by placing a length of 1/2" water pipe vertically in my vise. I then selected a case from the box and slid the correct shell holder over it. Then I lowered the case into the pipe until the shell holder rested on the end of the pipe. I ground an extra punch to the proper firing pin shape, lowered it through the hole in the middle of the shell holder and gave it a whack with a small hammer.
True to form, about 85% of the primers didn't make a sound through my earmuffs. The only way you could tell that it went off was to pull the case from the pipe and see if smoke issued from the end. If the primer DID go off in a normal fashion (rare) I'd simply slide the shell holder back and allow the case to fall through the pipe to a collection bucket on the floor. Pretty clever I thought.
Still with me? Good, because here comes the good part....roughly 30 of the primers exploded with such tremendous force that the punch was lifted out of the shell holder, accompanied by many bits of the primer. Most of the time the top of the primer was blown off and up through the hole in the shell holder, although ironically some of them deprimed beautifully. When it happened the first time I got a real smack on my fingers, along with black smudge marks but no skin punctures. I already had my earmuffs and glasses on but I put on gloves REAL quick. I finally discharged every single primer (or made sure they were dead) and they're ready for the scrapper.
The point of this whole exercise is this: old military ammo can vary in quality even if loaded in government arsenals. Each of those "strong" primers had too much compound in them in my opinion. On top of that, I did not have the primer properly supported as it would be in a rifle chamber, so the explosion blowing back through the shell holder is entirely my fault.
Anyway, I got them done and have nice fresh Privi cases to shoot. Viva' le France!