It was a cold and snowy day here in the waste lands and I just didn't have it in me to spend much time out of doors. I did some reloading tonight and some tidying up in preparation for a friend to come over and see how my loading room is set up.
While in there, I got looking at my 7-08 dies and the bins of once fired military 308 Brass I have in the corner of the shop. Seven millimeter Oh Eight brass is scarce right now and I decided to play around for a bit to see if I could make some useable 7mm-08 brass from the military stockpiles. A couple of dozen measurements of the mil-surp brass showed the necks to be .002" to .003" thicker than factory 7-08. FL resizing the brass to 7mm-08 and making a dummy round showed that there was room in the neck area of my TIKKA T-3 but I get nervous around thick necks so the first order was to reduce the thickness of the brass.
I don't like neck turning, but I am a fan of neck reaming. I decided to ream the 308 brass but all I have is a .308" reamer for my Forster trimmer. FL resized 308 would have too much removed, and unsized brass would have nothing removed. From a previous experiment I knew that I could lightly resize the 308 with a Lee Collet die and just take a skim cut from the brass with a 308 reamer. I ran several cases into the Collet die, and then ran them in my Forster with the reamer in place before I got the .012" reading I was wanting.
Once this setting was locked I repeated the operation for 20 cases. I then FL resized in my RCBS 7mm-08 die and trimmed to length. All 20 cases chambered easily in my TIKKA. A dummy made up with a Sierra GK gave the exact same micrometer reading across the neck as those I currently have loaded using commercial brass.
I now need to swage the primer pockets and finally, weigh all 20 cases and set them aside so that at some point, I can compare the average weight of the military casing against the average weight of the commercial brass for load adjustment. That will happen another day. Not a completed project but not bad for a snowy afternoon's puttering.~Muir
While in there, I got looking at my 7-08 dies and the bins of once fired military 308 Brass I have in the corner of the shop. Seven millimeter Oh Eight brass is scarce right now and I decided to play around for a bit to see if I could make some useable 7mm-08 brass from the military stockpiles. A couple of dozen measurements of the mil-surp brass showed the necks to be .002" to .003" thicker than factory 7-08. FL resizing the brass to 7mm-08 and making a dummy round showed that there was room in the neck area of my TIKKA T-3 but I get nervous around thick necks so the first order was to reduce the thickness of the brass.
I don't like neck turning, but I am a fan of neck reaming. I decided to ream the 308 brass but all I have is a .308" reamer for my Forster trimmer. FL resized 308 would have too much removed, and unsized brass would have nothing removed. From a previous experiment I knew that I could lightly resize the 308 with a Lee Collet die and just take a skim cut from the brass with a 308 reamer. I ran several cases into the Collet die, and then ran them in my Forster with the reamer in place before I got the .012" reading I was wanting.
Once this setting was locked I repeated the operation for 20 cases. I then FL resized in my RCBS 7mm-08 die and trimmed to length. All 20 cases chambered easily in my TIKKA. A dummy made up with a Sierra GK gave the exact same micrometer reading across the neck as those I currently have loaded using commercial brass.
I now need to swage the primer pockets and finally, weigh all 20 cases and set them aside so that at some point, I can compare the average weight of the military casing against the average weight of the commercial brass for load adjustment. That will happen another day. Not a completed project but not bad for a snowy afternoon's puttering.~Muir