My buddy has an ammo can full of 7.5mm Swiss ammunition. Headstamp is "T", this is lovely stuff and is Boxer primed. I deprimed 5 fired cases and it is all Boxer primed. So who made it and why the Boxer primers? Thank you.
A rather long read, but here it is.
(BTW...... that "T" means that it came from Thun. The point of Mfg.
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Part 1:
RUAG Swiss National Match boxer brass......... the finest on the planet.
Ok. So here's how the American reloading part of it began for the k31, the G11's, the zfk55 and the Pe57. I don't remember the year, sometime in the 90's but a lot of shooters on the various Swiss Forums and elsewhere will remember better than I do because they bought it from me and my partner Jim .......... My memory has gotten terrible......We brought in some 10,000 Ruag Swiss National Match Brass, but before that, I called Grafs and three other outfits asking if they'd like to front this buy and handle it themselves. "What? 7.5x what? For what rifles? never heard of them" (that was Jeff Knowles speaking, the Grafs plant manager and a great gentleman who eventually became a friend of mine) ..... So....... we brought it in. I advertised it on my home board, Swiss rifles.com and it disappeared faster than I could have imagined.
Within two weeks the whole bunch was gone. I called Grafs again. "What?!? You sold it all already?" Yep...... and I'm about to bring in another 50,000 of the same brass, and another 150,000 as soon as that's gone. I expect about a month. "Wait, wait wait! Do you want us to handle that?" (heh)
I put them in direct touch with the Ruag sales manager in Bern, and......... that's how it all began for US reloaders. I have an awful lot of Norma brass here, but if you really do a lot of reloading, you already know how soft Norma brass is.
I can't remember how much RUAG brass we have, but if you anneal every 5 cycles, you're going to be working on that first 200 brass for an awfully long time. I have yet to have any RUAG brass fail on me, and you can guess how many rounds I've sent down range here over the past 18 or 20 years since we did that first import............
That incredible boxer brass was cut off for export maybe 10 years ago when RUAG began their Commercial Loads for sales to Europe.
Can't remember for sure , but that's when Grafs began working with PRVI Partisan for brass and eventually the loaded cartridges, and our own 18 year association with Graf's and Brownell's began.
The real reason for RUAG discontinuing the import of that beautiful Swiss national match boxer brass?
Think about it. If you were enjoying the sales of GP11 ammunition into the US, why would you diminish that flow by supplying fully reloadable boxer brass to US consumers? That decision was pure marketing strategy, and it actually does make sense if you are the manufacturer.
For those of you who bought the early PPU brass from Grafs you will note that the Graf & Sons name is head stamped on that brass. The next few shipments of the new loaded cartridges from PPU also had Graf's head stamp, but within a short period of time that changed and PPU began putting their own name on the loaded cartridges and packaging..
Now the last reserves run of GP11 in 1995 are nearing an end, but RUAG began a new run four or five years ago. It's still that great Swiss National Match brass and still labeled GP11, but it's also still Berdan primed. The wax ring is gone since log term storage is no longer necessary, and the crimp is different. The last firearm in the Swiss Army requiring the crimp is the MG52, and that will soon be replaced by the FN Minimi, so........ no crimp is really required for the 7.5x55 caliber brass as concerns us reloaders.
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Okay, gentlemen. Let me see if I can get this straight for you.
*RUAG stops manufacturer of GP11 in 1995.
*RUAGbegins new production run of GP11 around 2015, still Berdan Primers.
*Sometime around 2008 I am able to get the first Boxer Brass into the US.
*That same year, Graf and Sons takes over the import.
*Three months later, Ruag halts their boxer brass shipping into the US.
*Around 2016 the new production GP11 appears in the European Swiss shooting clubs and clubs in Canada. *Sometime around 2018-2019 Beretta purchases
Ruag's brass production as well as Norma Munitions.
As for Dynamite Nobel, it does not appear to have been part of that deal nor any part of Ruag's Aerospace industry operations.
The (what I thought was) Ruag brass now being handled/ manufactured by Beretta may or may not be the exact national match brass as it was with Ruag. I suspect that it probably is.
Graf and Sons is now stocking both the PPU and the Beretta/Ruag brass.
Anyone who has samples of both of those cases can certainly do a run out including the original GP11 brass. The original issue GP11 may very well run out identically to the new Beretta/Ruag brass.
The only remaining question in my mind, is what came first, the chicken or the egg.
ammunition. Headstamp is "T", this is lovely stuff and is Boxer primed. I deprimed 5 fired cases and it is all Boxer primed. So who made it and why the Boxer primers? Thank you.
PM
