Missing the old Greek HXP ball ammo? More seems to have been found.

[Rick]

While preparing to dive into another reloading project in preparation of one of the 1950 Long Branch rifles I sold back in the early 90's coming back to me, I was online looking for some suggestions on where to start with developing loads for PP's 190gr FMJ load.

My search engine decided it couldn't help me with a link to help me with that (Quickload, anybody?), but it did offer me this:

HXP 303 British Military Surplus 174GR FMJ Brass Case NON-CORROSIVE 1970’s Greek Production. Packed in Spam Cans, in Bandoliers and Stripper Clips (300rds) Free Shipping $233.95
.303 British HXP ammo | Shop Ammunitions | Max Arms

I still have somewhere between 500 and a 1000 rounds of HXP still squirreled away from when it was cheap like borscht at the end of the 1980's, and I now have reload data that is a bit better in my rifle than even the HXP that I used and considered to be my benchmark.

Otherwise, I would be sitting down figuring out how many cans of this HXP ammunition I was willing to fork out for. The usual: I have no association with this online merchant and know nothing about them or about their business reputation, either good or bad.

Hope this helps some Service Rifle serious shooters out that miss the HXP and similar ball ammunition.

Now, that out of the way: is my karma working and does anybody have some ballpark level starting loads for PP's 190 grain FMJ BT bullet?

In my loading notes, I have a find from PP that they had a military 190gr ball BT Mk8z at some point with a claimed MV of about 2360 fps - I'll be looking for a potential grouping find, not chasing their velocities.

PP offers the bullet as a component as well as the 174, 180 and 182 gr, offerings, so for the price of a bag of them I am going to see if there's anything special they might deliver as a grouping surprise.

[Lee Enfield]

Yugo had Hurricanes at the beginning of WW2, and a lot of wartime support (mostly to Tito's "partisans").
I've always been curious why they made so much .303 unless it was to support the Greek Commie insurgents in the 50s.

[limpetmine]

This company also had some FN producted 7.62 in 1,200 round cases.
I bought one.
Then I bought another.
Then I bought at third.
I was going to buy a 4th, and they sold out.
No issues with the sale or delivery.

[ssgross]

Thanks, Rick for the heads up. FYI the price was 242.95 but with free shipping. Price is well worth it for the brass and clips alone. Last time I wanted just a clip or two for my range back the cheapest were like $12+ each. I have plenty of 303 projectiles on hand but my brass is finally showing its age. Sorry can't help on the load data you are interested in - I always tend to load my 303 light for 100-200yd plinking at steal targets in order to save wear on brass. This with frequent annealing has given 17 reloadings of my winchester brass so far, but my borecam has decided it's time for them to go in the recycle pile after the next firing. I should be set for life now.

[Rick]

I've always been curious why they made so much .303 unless it was to support the Greek Commie insurgents in the 50s.

I did some all expenses paid vacations in the Balkans in the 1990's. That was actually the Third Balkan War after Tito's death, if you count them originally going at it when it was part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire hot mess leading up to WWI.

[sidebar: WWI was an inevitability, whether or not there was an Archduke Ferdinand, Sofia, and a murderous Serb: an excellent (and depressing) detailed audio narrative of the military and political history of WW1 is Dan Carlin's Hardcore History "Blueprint For Armageddon" series. Much of it covers the decisions and thinking at the top levels, but almost as much covers the perspectives and historical writing of the individual soldiers in the trenches. https://www.dancarlin.com/product/ha...eddon-series/]

WWII was the excuse/opportunity for them to go back at it again i.e. the Chetniks and Ustache in the Second Balkan War. I talked to a couple of German WWII veterans at a gasthaus I was having lunch and beer at while touring the alpine passes of Europe on a motorcycle. One of the things that stuck in my memory is that through the bartender who was also acting as interpreter, they told me Germans thought being sent to the Russian Front was bad, but being sent to the Balkans was far, far worse. They said that if the Russians captured you, they'd just murder you instead of taking you prisoner. If they got their hands on you in the Balkans, it would be a long, excrutiatingly painful death.

And then Tito died... and within weeks the Ustache and Chetniks picked right up where they left off... the Third Balkan War. Much of that history involved regular border clashes with Greece, but I don't remember Greece doing much of anything in the final Balkan War that we got an invitation to attend. I also don't recall seeing any British Empire weapons in all the weapons we seized in the UNPAs that would have been fed .303 British

That's one UN mission that appears to have succeeded - 30 years later and the reorganized Balkan nations seem to be pretty much at peace. Quit a few guys who did tours over there have gone back to see what Medak looks like now, the Maslenica Bridge, Dragovic Road, etc. They had no concerns with taking their wives and kids with them, those who took them along.

Tito must have been as masterful a leader/dictator to bottle all that hatred up, have them living in peace together while dancing around playing coy to avoid being consumed by the Soviet bear. All while stocking Yugoslavia with species of wild game to satisfy his passion for hunting. He's probably also responsible for Serbia becoming very good at manufacturing military arms and ammunition after WWII.

Anyways, those 190 grain .303 bullets currently offered for sale by PP are new manufacture and well past the age of the Hurricane fighter aircraft.

[Rick]

I have plenty of 303 projectiles on hand but my brass is finally showing its age.

I still have enough HXP left that I think will satisfy any need I have for actual military ball until I go for the long dirt nap, but with PP's unprimed new brass easily available I wouldn't even buy it with an eye towards being a source of high quality .303 British brass.

PP's commercial unprimed cases are (in my opinion and that of others) about as good as you can hope for. Quite a few years ago when I started chasing after the best grouping jacketed load I could develop for my Long Branch, I went over brass samples from various military samples from WWII, Korea, and the Cold War era as well as commercial cases from Winchester, etc.

After weighing them all, case capacity, rim dimensions, etc. the HXP and PP commercial unprimed brass turned out to be pretty much clones of the military ball, particularly rim dimensions.

There was a sale on about the time I finished mucking around doing that comparison, and I stocked up on a lifetime supply of PP's .303 British brass. Then went about expanding the necks with a .33 M die and then a false shoulder that results in a light crush fit when chambering before the first firing - no such thing as the initial stressing of the brass with the first shot after that. As most of my shooting these days is with cast bullets rather than jacketed at something approaching service ammunition levels, I do think I'm fixed for life.

I also anneal after each firing while prepping for the next reload; in any case, I don't expect to be needing more cases whether from ball ammo like this HXP or commercial from PP.

[Alan de Enfield]

PP's commercial unprimed cases are (in my opinion and that of others) about as good as you can hope for. Quite a few years ago when I started chasing after the best grouping jacketed load I could develop for my Long Branch, I went over brass samples from various military samples from WWII, Korea, and the Cold War era as well as commercial cases from Winchester, etc.

After weighing them all, case capacity, rim dimensions, etc. the HXP and PP commercial unprimed brass turned out to be pretty much clones of the military ball, particularly rim dimensions.

SAAMI brass is one of my "pet hates" - why should a commercial organisation have the power to redefine the specification and standards of ammunition that was in use for decades before they were founded in 1926 ?

The problem is that SAAMI decide to 'throw' 303 into the standard US 30 cal category and use 30 cal dimension which were at odds with the British Military specifications.

We should also remember that manufacturers will work towards the bottom end of the specifications - if they can save 100th of an ounce (or a 1000th of an ounce) on every case produced they will save brass to the tune of $ millions every year - why would they use more materials than they need to ?

Lets look at just a couple of dimensons :

SAAMI 303 minimum rim-thickness is 0.054" / Max 0.064" so what do the US manufacturers do - they tend to produce to around 0.056"-0.058" which allows for tool wear which may produce 0.060" or even 0.054"

The British Military specification was a Minimum of 0.058" / Max 0.064" and PP production tends to be between 0.060" and 0.063"

This means that not only would much of the US commercial SAAMI production have been rejected as undersize, but it also actually increases the 'effective' headspace.

Ed Horton did a lot of investigaton into this and a photo he used to illustrate it shows that indeed "a picture is worth a 1000 words"

You guess which one is PP and which is Win.


Another of Ed's pictures shows the difference between a PP (Prvi Partisan) case wall thickness and a Win case wall thickness.

[Rick]

SAAMI brass is one of my "pet hates" - why should a commercial organisation have the power to redefine the specification and standards of ammunition that was in use for decades before they were founded in 1926 ?

The problem is that SAAMI decide to 'throw' 303 into the standard US 30 cal category and use 30 cal dimension which were at odds with the Britishicon Military specifications.

There's yet another Lee Enfield anomaly.

To add context, American manufacturers were manufacturing the Winchester 1895 lever action and Savage a similar lever action chambered in .303 British long before for the American market - more likely than not aimed at sales to Americans/immigrants who felt ties to the Empire and its relatively new back then .303 British cartridge.

Meanwhile, earlier in 1893, the US military with their choices being between the British Lee Enfield, the German Mauser, and the Krag-Jorgeson rifle, chose the Krag-Jorgeson chambered in what was then named the ".30 U.S." We mostly refer to it now as the 30-40 Krag - my Grandfather's Winchester Model 95 manufactured in 1898 is roll marked "30 U.S." on the barrel.

Most apparently agree that the 30/40 is a blatant copy of the .303 British along with some design changes for one reason or another - but in performance there is little to nothing in the way of ballistics between the two.

Related to your observations about SAAMI's specifications, back in 1893 when the US chose the Krag-Jorgenson rifle and the 30 U.S. chambering, while watching the Empire's wars being fought with the relatively new and advanced .303 caliber .303 British, the Americans at their arsenals were happy to closely copy the .303 case - but they rejected the .303 bullet caliber and for whatever reason decided to invent the .003" smaller .30 caliber for military use in the new bolt action military rifles. Two years later in 1895 while Springfield was churning out bolt action rifles in 30 U.S. Winchester offered their lever action in 30 U.S. It was three years later they offered the 1895 in .303 British as well.

SAAMI, if I remember correctly, specifies the same rim thickness for the 30 U.S./30-40 Krag as they specify for the .303 British. Did they pick that up from US arms and ammunition manufacturing of .303 British, that Winchester (and Savage followed) began in 1895? While Winchester was probably manufacturing cartridge cases to reload both the new 30 U.S. and .303 British at the same time?

Is Winchester back in 1895 the guilty culprit that established the American criteria for what America decided the dimensions of .303 British cases should be?

So it would be of academic interest to see chamber drawings for those Winchester and Savage lever actions chambered in .303 British LONG before the beginnings of WWI and even in the case of the Model 95, the Boer Wars. I'm need to get some work done, so I can't run downstairs and compare rim dimensions for the 30 U.S. versus .303 British, or measure the rims of British WW1 ball versus some ammunition for my 1895 from the 1920s that came to me along with my grandfather's rifle. But there's some interesting thoughts:

What are Winchester's chamber dimensions in 1898 for their .303 British chambering look like in comparison to the British for the Lee Metford (?) of the same time? And what do the cartridge case measurements from American manufactured .303 British in 1895 compare to British ammunition of the same period?

Were the differences in dimensions started right from the moment in 1893 that the US military replicated the .303 British with the American 30 U.S. chambering and case and American ammunition manufacturers decided to make those two identical rims the same thickness?

I've seen Ed Horton's pictures here and elsewhere, and I also used the same Casemaster setup to similarly gather dimensions for comparison.

I do believe that for reloaders, the PP unprimed cases are the foundation for reloading the best ammunition for .303 British rifles.

[Alan de Enfield]

To add context, American manufacturers were manufacturing the Winchester 1895 lever action and Savage a similar lever action chambered in .303 British

I was always of the understanding that the Savage 303 was a very different round to the British 303 - is that not true and Savage produced both types ?

[Rick]

I was always of the understanding that the Savage 303 was a very different round to the British 303 - is that not true and Savage produced both types ?

You are more likely to be correct than I am. I am pretty sure I'm right in believing the .303 Savage was the proprietary cartridge Arthur Savage chambered his Model 99 in. But I thought that Savage also added the .303 British as well, sometime in the early years. I am probably wrong on that. I really don't have too much interest in lever actions other than the ones in the family that have passed to me through wills.

However, at the Kalispell gun show two weekends ago, I saw a very new looking Savage 99 in .358 Winchester that I would have bought on the spot without any haggling 25+ years ago, when I ultimately decided to have my gunsmith friend take a NIB Browning BLR chambered in .308 and convert it to a slightly longer barrelled .358 Winchester. My then live-in girlfriend, now my wife is right handed but left eye dominant and likes hunting as much as I do. As she wasn't a sure thing keeper at the time, I wanted to get her a rifle she could use left handed for moose, elk, deer, etc that I could use as well if she didn't turn out to be a keeper.

They do look to be very nice, trim, easy carrying rifles. You see more Savage 99s still headed out hunting in Canada these days than you see Lee Enfields in a truck - at least in the southern portions of Canada.