FieroCDSP
Member
Okay, folks. After a year of reloading for my 40cal, I've taken up rifle loading for my SKS and Mosin Nagant.
I went out today and picked up a can of H4198, some more CCI#34 arsenal primers and a pack of Remington 9 1/2's. I primed the 10 availiable 7.62x39 cases with the arsenal primers, loaded five with 23.2gr of powder (24.5gr starting minus 5% for the magnum equivalent primers), and when i got to seating, ran into a few problems.
First, I sized the case with a Lee full-length die with the larger (.311) expander. When seating, i ran into a problem in that the bullet (Remington .310) was seating normally until the mouth reached the crimp cannelure, and then it slipped down freely until it reached the top of the groove. This is obviously not very conductive to proper depth setting. So I resized them again with the .308 expander, but had to force the bullet into the mouth to get it started, then it seated normally. Is this common?
Crimping was a different matter. I buckled the mouths of two cases, presumably by having too much of a crimp, or crimping too far back on the groove. This was with the Lee seating die. Any hints or tricks to fixing those cases and for setting my die right to avoid this?
Third, and this was the dumb part of my adventure: Never check the chambering of a round in an SKS indoors. I suspect because of the slight(not visible) buckling of my cases due to the crimp, that the case mouths were resisting chambering all the way unless I let the action slam home. So I checked them by slamming it home. Upon inspection afterwards, I noticed the primers had taken a slight hit from the firing pin as the bolt came to a stop.
Had these been anything but the armory primers, I might have been in a world of hurt. Just a heads up, these armory primers are worth it for milsurps.
I went out today and picked up a can of H4198, some more CCI#34 arsenal primers and a pack of Remington 9 1/2's. I primed the 10 availiable 7.62x39 cases with the arsenal primers, loaded five with 23.2gr of powder (24.5gr starting minus 5% for the magnum equivalent primers), and when i got to seating, ran into a few problems.
First, I sized the case with a Lee full-length die with the larger (.311) expander. When seating, i ran into a problem in that the bullet (Remington .310) was seating normally until the mouth reached the crimp cannelure, and then it slipped down freely until it reached the top of the groove. This is obviously not very conductive to proper depth setting. So I resized them again with the .308 expander, but had to force the bullet into the mouth to get it started, then it seated normally. Is this common?
Crimping was a different matter. I buckled the mouths of two cases, presumably by having too much of a crimp, or crimping too far back on the groove. This was with the Lee seating die. Any hints or tricks to fixing those cases and for setting my die right to avoid this?
Third, and this was the dumb part of my adventure: Never check the chambering of a round in an SKS indoors. I suspect because of the slight(not visible) buckling of my cases due to the crimp, that the case mouths were resisting chambering all the way unless I let the action slam home. So I checked them by slamming it home. Upon inspection afterwards, I noticed the primers had taken a slight hit from the firing pin as the bolt came to a stop.
Had these been anything but the armory primers, I might have been in a world of hurt. Just a heads up, these armory primers are worth it for milsurps.
