.303, unprimed brass

[ActionYobbo]

Talking of .303 brass........ I remember seeing a HUGE pile of maybe 60,000 cases from Vickers guns of fired .303". I wonder if anyone could invent a simple two stage gadget that would
a) de-prime and mill out the anvil, then
b) a second stage to perhaps drill a third fire hole that would bring the total surface area of the (now....) THREE fire holes up to the total surface area of the larger single boxer primer fire hole and
c) If necessary, bore/ream out the existing primer pocket to accept a currently available primer.

Has anyone thought of this? Not being an ammo man and never had to reload or ever had to buy a round of ammo in his life - so far - it just seems like a simple idea

its fairly simple. I have been converting berdan 303 to boxer to feed the hungry BREN. the WW2 brit cases last longer than modern commercial cases

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[Maxwell Smart]

Are you using brass or copper for the sleeve material in the primer pocket?

---------- Post added at 12:32 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:23 AM ----------

All that aside, you will need a stash of the RWS 6000 Berdan primer to get another go or two out of the cases.

Have said stash, and have been getting about 7 reloads out of Mk 7 brass. Not questioning the physics/chemistry at all, because I do get about 2-3% neck splits, but in general what has been defeating me from going further is the gradual increase in size of primer pockets. I can use a .250" one for the first 4 reloads, then go up to the .254" ones for the next 3.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

That's keen , Max.

I keep a stash of the .254 size RWS as well, but they get used in 7.62 x 54 cases. A mate also uses them in several British and European "Big Game" cartridges.

i haven't seen the RWS 6000 in the usual Oz shops for a while; any clues?

[Maxwell Smart]

i haven't seen the RWS 6000 in the usual Oz shops for a while; any clues?

From what I've been told, the RWS 6000 are long out of production; I put in en e-mail enquiry on the RWS site, and they advised me the same.

I last saw RWS 6000 for sale in Brisbane about 6 months ago, but the price was pretty steep - I crunched the numbers, and once the RWS were over about $142/1000 (add in DG freight) it was more economical to buy new boxer-primed Prvi brass rather than try stretch out my Mk 7 brass.

Mind you, I do have plenty of the 5.5mm berdans so the sleeving-down method might get a better look later on. Oh for a Bren gun to put 'em through.....