yhtomit
Member
Hi there!
I picked up some once-fired Makarov brass at the range a few weeks ago, because of a) brass-picking OCD 2) curiosity value -- a neat historical artifact of the Cold War and 3) with all the rabid fandom that Makarovs draw, I certainly might one day be sucked into buying one
I'm sure there are some people who can pass a pile of brass on the ground and say "Never mind, I don't shoot that caliber," but I am not so blessed. I say instead "Say, I have an empty peanut butter jar those could sit it until I get a chance to do more with them ..."
However, from posts elsewhere on THR (in the handguns section) I have come to the understanding that most (all?) Makarov brass is Berdan rather than boxer primed. Please forgive the newbie level of my related questions springing from this, which I'll try to put in logical order so that earlier questions may answer later ones:
- Is the primer pocket itself the same shape and size? That is, does the brass arrive the same way to the factory spot at which primers are snapped in, and a boxer primer or a Berdan primer could have each just as easily been snapped into the same case? Or is the brass itself different in some way to accommodate the different primer types?
- If the brass *is* the same initially, is it in any way rendered useless for the other type once the initial priming has been done?
- If the brass is salvageable, and has Berdan primers, how to remove them? From what I've read (but have never actually dealt with Berdan primed cases), they must be pried out somehow rather than popped out the way I can pop primers out of .45ACP cases with my Lee turret press.
So, for anyone out there who reloads Makarov, I hope you can shed a little light. I'm at school right now, and the cases I got are not, so I can't examine and answer questions about 'em until next week, but would appreciate any tips.
These cases sure cleaned up (and shined up) nicely, too, so it would be nice if they could at least potentially one day be useful as reloads But I don't want to be tempted by a good deal on a die set should I encounter one unless I know I'm not dealing with unusable cases in the first place.
Thanks!
timothy
I picked up some once-fired Makarov brass at the range a few weeks ago, because of a) brass-picking OCD 2) curiosity value -- a neat historical artifact of the Cold War and 3) with all the rabid fandom that Makarovs draw, I certainly might one day be sucked into buying one
I'm sure there are some people who can pass a pile of brass on the ground and say "Never mind, I don't shoot that caliber," but I am not so blessed. I say instead "Say, I have an empty peanut butter jar those could sit it until I get a chance to do more with them ..."However, from posts elsewhere on THR (in the handguns section) I have come to the understanding that most (all?) Makarov brass is Berdan rather than boxer primed. Please forgive the newbie level of my related questions springing from this, which I'll try to put in logical order so that earlier questions may answer later ones:
- Is the primer pocket itself the same shape and size? That is, does the brass arrive the same way to the factory spot at which primers are snapped in, and a boxer primer or a Berdan primer could have each just as easily been snapped into the same case? Or is the brass itself different in some way to accommodate the different primer types?
- If the brass *is* the same initially, is it in any way rendered useless for the other type once the initial priming has been done?
- If the brass is salvageable, and has Berdan primers, how to remove them? From what I've read (but have never actually dealt with Berdan primed cases), they must be pried out somehow rather than popped out the way I can pop primers out of .45ACP cases with my Lee turret press.
So, for anyone out there who reloads Makarov, I hope you can shed a little light. I'm at school right now, and the cases I got are not, so I can't examine and answer questions about 'em until next week, but would appreciate any tips.
These cases sure cleaned up (and shined up) nicely, too, so it would be nice if they could at least potentially one day be useful as reloads
But I don't want to be tempted by a good deal on a die set should I encounter one unless I know I'm not dealing with unusable cases in the first place. Thanks!
timothy
