Surplus .308 Berdan primed cases

2520 Views 2 Replies 3 Participants Last post by evan price, May 12, 2011

Viper_XDm

Discussion Starter · May 9, 2011

Ok... just been researching a bit and wanted to ask you fellow reloaders here a couple of questions. I have a pretty good pile of surplus .308 cases that are berdan primed. I know that the berdan primer is crimped and sealed in the pocket and there are some ideas floating around the net on how to deprime and reload this stuff.

But while searching around I could not find a source for berdan primers at least in the USA, do you know of any?

Any one know if the pockets can be milled out to accept a standard boxer style primer? Yeah I know the anvil is part of the case so it would have to be milled out also.

Is the brass worth even messing with or just save it and take it to the scrap yard for recycling?

P.S. Yes I have boxer primed cases too and am working on getting all my stuff set up to reload them also. Just evaluating my options.

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fredj338

· #2 · May 9, 2011

If you can find Berdan primers, the fuss to deprime is jsut not worth it IMO, the pirmers will likely be double boxer primers, so the brass just isn't worth keeping when once fired brass is available cheap. A berdan primed case has two flash holes. While you could mill or bor ethe primer pocket anvil out, the twin flash holes coul dcause you all kinds of trouble. Once fired 308 is available for $210/K. 1K bedan primers could run you $100 if you can find them, just not worth the effort or cost IMO. If you still want to go forward, e-mail Graf's, see if they can order them for you.

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evan price

· #3 · May 12, 2011

I am getting $2+ a pound for scrap brass right now. It's not really worth the effort to mess around with a common caliber like Berdan 308 Win/7.62x51- there's lots of Boxer primed brass out there, you can get it for less than ten cents a case if you look hard enough. What's your time worth? If I wanted to I could in theory recycle all the 60+ pounds of scrap Berdan 762 brass I have but instead I sell them and use the money to buy other stuff.

There are many sizes of Berdan primers- unlike Boxer, which has standard sizes, Berdan primers come in several sizes even for the same caliber depending on who made it. For a while Grafs had some Berdan primers but they were only one size. They did fit a lot of brass though.

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