Reduce powder in NATO 7.62?

[Ignition Override]

The two guns are both Spanish FR8s with excellent headspace results, with bolts matching the actions. Yes, I spent several hours reading up on various possible and rumored issues, including chats with a former Canadian ammo lab technician who also shoots his FR8.

My only question here is about using actual 7.62 NATO brass-Not Spanish 7.62, designed for the weaker FR7 (small ring conversions to 7.62).

I've reloaded comm. .308 about 500 times combined, at the min. recommended load on the Lee charts.
Having reloaded about twenty-forty of these NATO cases, should it be changed to 10% less than the min. on the Lee charts, due to thicker brass?

Most of this belted ammo says 'P S D', 6 7 (or 87?). Some of it has other markings, such as Greek letters, 'T Z', or 'I ^ I' (Israeli?).

 

[FROGO207]

I have little experience with this type of round but if you do reduce the load an extra 10% the worst you would have is an underpowered load. I doubt that any bullets would be stuck in the barrel and the added safety of the workup could not hurt. I do this myself with casings that have smaller internal volume than commercial casings. Just do not use a propellant that is not supposed to be downloaded per the manual like stated for H110. I remember reading of others on here that own a FR8. Hopefully one of them will chime in about the reloading questions you have.

 

[homatok]

While some may be, not ALL military brass is thicker than comercial brass! Weigh a few (one at a time) cases from your batch of military cases and from your comercial ones and compare. If the military is noticably heavier the interior capacity is smaller and may well need a reduced charge.

 

[popper]

I don't have or shoot milsurp. I would use H4895, you can go way below min load without problems. If the brass chambers it will fire form to the chamber anyway. Chamber cut for belted ammo? Your last comment is confusing, to me.

 

[Ignition Override]

popper:
Those are just some sources for the ammo, in case anybody is familiar with the codes. It is just trivia, but might be interesting.

A screwdriver is needed to pry the ammo from the belted components, only because that's how the ammo was shipped.
The FR8 is a Spanish bolt action, but has the strength of the large-ring Mauser action.