Have you ever tweaked Milsurp ammo?

P

Pond James Pond

New member
I was letting brain take wonder during a forest walk this afternoon. I was thinking if it would be easy to improve milsurp ammo by pulling the bullets, perhaps neck sizing the case. Setting the shoulders back to match one's chamber (if possible without decapping). You coul reduce the charge weight by a tiny bit (but not much seeing as we don't know the min for that powder) to see if it might group better. Seating depth could be played with.

Ever been tried? If so was it successful?

I ask this because regular ammo goes for well over €1 here. My handloads go for about€0.80.

Milsurp on the other hand is €0.30 each. So I could get serviceable ammo cheap and all it might cost is time. The downside is these are berdan primed so still only one use brass.
 
It's been done successfully many times.

For safety, I would weigh the powder charge and reduce it 2 percent, then work back up if pressure allowed.

A chronograph would be a very valuable tool for this kind of experimentation.

Don't give up on those Berdan cases, either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0q0E4GtSa4
 
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Setting the shoulders back to match one's chamber
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I do not load for One's chamber. I have no clue why someone would set the shoulder back on a case that fits all chambers.

I purchased 8mm57 ammo, many of the cases were ejected with long gas cuts in the case body after firing, many of the bullets outran my 30/06 bullets. I thought 2,900+ feet per second was fast. I pulled the ammo down and reduced the powder charge, then I pulled all of the bullets and saved the powder to get rid of the cases and primers.

It was about this time Hornady accused me of making too many mistakes. we got that straightened out, they decided they had a problem with one of their contractors. I wanted to go visit them while I was there. Hornady said "too late", they changed heat treating contractors. It was about this time I went with the RCBS collet bullet puller.

F. Guffey
 
Don't give up on those Berdan cases, either.
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An interesting video but there is no way I'd find berdan primers here, so little point in trying to decap them.

On top of which you then, presumably need a whole new tool for seating them as the Lee press and hand tools are for boxer primers. So then I'd have to do the whole boxer pocket conversion that same channel showed all doable, but perhaps a little involved!!
 
i have never done it, but I plan to for my mosin nagant. brass is hard to find in 54r and the cost of powder alone costs more than an entire round of surplus.

another bonus is I want the steel core bullets for my .300blk. but lots of people make "Mexican match" ammo from surplus and have been for years. pour out the powder from all your rounds you plan to do, and re fill to consistent levels and seat a nicer bullet of similar weight.....done. the only thing is trying to use different weight bullets with an unknown powder, in which I don't recommend, in that case you should just dump the powder and use your own
 
"Improve", how much?

I could see doing it if brass were difficult to come by, but otherwise I don't think it would be worthwhile the way you're going to do it.

"Toying" with powder loads for consistency could be done- IF you knew that the powder in every case was exactly the same. If you can verify they're all from the same lot, maybe so.

Not just viewing it from a safety perspective here- what you're trying to do is make match grade ammo from milsurp components. The powder could (and probably would) be from different decades, different manufacturers, and have wildly varying burn rates if you can't confirm they're all from the same source. Forget about consistency with that recipe.

As Skizzums mentioned, about the only way I've heard of this being done with success is pulling bullets and working up loads with commercial powder. On this side of the pond, pulled milsurp .308 bullets are often available cheap.
If the bullets are decent, I'd go that route.

At least you're talking brass, not steel. Water decapping works fine, as long as you can get Berdan primers over there.

Time is money, in the end you're going to have to decide whether what you might gain is worth the trouble.

JMO, YMMV.
 
In the 1950s here, many rounds of MilSurp .30-06 were pulled and replaced with soft points of same weight. Never heard of that causing a problem in 1903s, M-1s or rebarrelled German Mousers.

I've always decreased the powder by 2 percent and worked back up, but never had any problems. Why waste good powder?

BTW, your regular seating tools work fine with most Berdans
 
In the 1950s here, many rounds of MilSurp .30-06 were pulled and replaced with soft points of same weight. Never heard of that causing a problem in 1903s, M-1s or rebarrelled German Mousers.
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That type ammo put a lot of suppers on our table through the years, and it didn't stop being a practice back in the 50's either.:cool:

I was still pulling ball ammo in the mid 80's and substituting the 147gr bullet for a 150gr Sierra Pro Hunter for my pop, and he was still putting deer on the ground with them.
 
Depends on your accuracy requirements.

The military in the US is schitzophernic, they demand the very best components and raw materials, then botch the assembly/final finish.

Then, they make rifling twist/chamber/barrel length changes that completely defeat any accuracy potential on the rounds they are producing.

Nothing like making a round that is accurate and hits plenty hard,
Then screwing with the rifling, hacking down the barrel,
Then complaining the round isn't accurate or hitting hard enough...

There loss is my gain on the surplus market,
I don't expect the round to shoot well without a reasonable length barrel with a reasonable twist rate for the velocity/bullet weight...

With this in mind,
There has never been a shortage of game in the fridge,
And varmints don't overrun the place.
The US 'Surplus' ammo shoots just fine without screwing with it.
Shoots and cycles just fine, leaves behind acceptable reloading brass so its OK with me.

-----

Ammo made outside the US is a crap shoot!
There is a remarkable amount of 'Surplus' that was intended for US sales to generate hard currency. Its not 'Surplus' at all...
And its not built to any military standard known to man.

'China' ammo has heavy metal cores made of toxic waste.
They buy toxic scrap, then sell us back the toxic metals in everything from pet foods, to kids toys, to bullet cores...

Its advertised as 'Surplus', but again, its built to produce hard currency...
 
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Did it with 54r years back when the only thing available was Norma factory loaded ammo at the LGS for $1 a pop. Has a bunch of Bulgarian brass case 54r ammo I paid $30 per tin. I pulled the bullets,weighed the charges,got an average across a decent sampling,dropped the charge weight down a couple grains and worked back up to an accurate load using 150 gr. Speer Hot-Cor .311" dia. bullets a reloading buddy game me he had no further use for.

Still have around 150 rds. left in the rainy day stash.
M44MexicanMatch_zps0c0fe3de.jpg
 
I take GP11 ammo, pull out the FMJ bullets and seat 150 grain Remington Corelokts. These work great for hunting whitetail. The "Mexican match" ammo is a cheap way to make decent hunting ammo. That is if the original stuff had consistent powder charges.
 
I pulled the bullets,weighed the charges,got an average across a decent sampling,dropped the charge weight down a couple grains and worked back up to an accurate load
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This is pretty much what I had in mind, but keeping the original 168gn bullets. These are Finnish surplus, I believe. The packaging certainly is.

If you pull ten or twenty and weigh the powder each time, you'll get a good idea of the original (intended) charge. From there you can pool all the powder and then meter it out to that weight or perhaps do that 1gn decrease and work-up.

Time is money, in the end you're going to have to decide whether what you might gain is worth the trouble.
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First and foremost it is worth bearing in mind that each of these milsurp cartridges cost less than just my bullet in my other handloads!! Doesn't even take primers, powder and the case life into account.
Complete milsurp: €0.30, Amax bullet: €0.35, Lockbase bullet:€.045, Oryx bullet: €0.57!!!

If these turn into workable, accurate loads, I'm onto a winner. It is a punt, but that is OK... Buy 100 at €30 and play around: no great loss if it pays off. At worst, some slightly cheaper trigger time.

Apart from the initial measuring and subsequent testing for charge weight and OAL (which I would have to do on a new bullet-powder combination anyway), the only additional stage is the pulling.

Everything else is no different to regular reloading: Size the neck, powder charge, bullet depth, done.

As for the brass, I'll keep it, but I don't think I'm likely to reload it, unless I find a berdan supplier. I saw a video on converting the cases and that does seem like too much effort...
 
Yes, many people have pulled milsurp ammo apart and put it back together.

One person I used to know on another board pulled Turk 8x57 ammo apart to make California legal hunting ammo using the powder and primed brass. I did the same thing to put the powder and bullet into commercial brass with non-corrosive (and more consistent) primers for better accuracy.

If you are pulling rifle bullets, I highly recommend an RCBS collet bullet puller.

Jimro
 
Collet pullers are so much easier than inertial puller.
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You bad man.

You're trying to make me spend money.
(Not that I've needed any outside influences in that department, mind.)

Does the RCBS not deform the bullets when it pinches tight? That would be a no-no!

Certainly looks good though, but lets see how my initial tests go. If accuracy results make it look like something that I will get into to a greater degree, it may be worth the inevitable expense.
 
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Most of the surplus ammo will have some sort of sealant around the bullets. You might have to set up your seating die to just bump the bullet back enough to break the sealant. Then you might have to clean the neck up depending on how much is actually there.

Like mentioned, dumping the powder in the scale and averaging works great when working with similar bullet weights. Cleaning the sealant, you can use a good solvent that evaporates like possibly Acetone or Xylene on a Q-tip to wipe the necks out. Some dip the necks then stand them upside down on a paper towel. We simply wiped the bulk out with acetone on a q-tip if it had a glob, and went on with it.

Once you break the sealant though they usually pull pretty easily and the collet type pullers put leverage to your advantage.
 
Yep! I used to take 7.62x51mm Lake City Match M118 ammo and replace the 173gr bullet with a Sierra 168gr HPBT Match King for use in my Springfield M1A.
 
Being a cheap coward, I would only use powder from the same headstamp/lot of ammo. I've read that powders in military ammo was often "blended" and or substituted to attain a specific pressure/velocity...:confused:

But I would remove the mil-spec. bullet and substitute a commercial bullet of the same weight...
 
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