Attention to detail

L

lugerstew

New member
I just sized a hornady 7mm-08 brass while resizing my hornady 243 brass and didn't hardly notice any difference needed in force to accomplish it.
I think I would have even loaded it up and shot it if I hadn't looked one more time before putting it with my 243 ready to load up brass. Heck I even measure headspacing and overall length of each brass and it was the same. The only reason I noticed was seeing the 7mm-08 on the bottom.
It ended up there, because when I go to the range I usually find various amounts of once fired brass and bring them home and tumble them all together with my own. But I always inspect and separate afterwards.
Wow not sure what would have happened if I had loaded and fired it, probably would have been fine, but??.
So if anyone loads for 243, be careful of stray 7mm-08 getting in.
 
If 7mm 08 is sized down to 6mm 08 it will work fine, although if going for great accuracy it might not shoot into the same group due to different neck tension.
 
I've done worse...using factory ammo, too. Federal Fusion has those psychedelic colored boxes, once went to the range and was shooting 270 and 308 at the same time, stuck the 308 into the 270 without checking which box I using--the catridge chambered and the bullet actually hit the target, but it took a very long time for me to get the case unstuck from the barrel and the bolt head unlocked from the receiver. I was lucky the rifle didn't blow up--thank you Savage.
 
If I understand correctly, he doesn't have an oversized bullet, just a 7-08 case resized in a 243 die and ready to receive a 243 bullet.

Since the 243, like the 7-08, share the 308 Win as their parent cartridge, this should actually be able to work rather easily. SAAMI case length maximum for the 243 is 0.010" longer than the 7-08 and if resizing didn't grow the 7-08 case beyond that, you won't even need to trim (but check and trim if needed). Then you need to check that the neck with a seated bullet doesn't exceed 0.276" diameter. If both those conditions are met, the finished cartridge will be within the SAAMI external dimensions and should fire just fine.

Since this is a little like changing brass brands, unless you are using starting loads, I would also check the case water overflow capacity of the resized 7-08 and one of your 243 cases after resizing and trimming both. They should be pretty close, and you can adjust the powder weight by about half the percentage of any water weight difference in the cases as a very rough pressure equalizer up to a couple or three grains of water capacity difference.
 
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