Got a question maybe someone can help with. 308 Brass is VERY difficult to find right now and my wife bought me a 308 for Christmas and I have never used the cartridge so I don't have components for it. But, I do have a couple of hundred rounds of once fired Remington 243 brass that my late father shot up. Since the 243 is pretty much based on the 308 Win case I'm thinking of trying to open the 243 brass up. I can find a lot of info on line from going down from 308 to 243 but not the reverse.

All the dies I use are RCBS and I have 6.5x55 and 7MM Mag. I'm thinking I can increase the case mouth of the 243 brass in stages. I plan on taking the expander out of the 6.5 dies and the 7mm dies and use them on 308 dies and go from 6mm to 6.5 mm to 7mm to 30 cal putting lots of lube on the case mouth and then trimming if needed and fireforming the brass. In my mind this should work. My questions are:

Has anyone else tried something like this or am I looking at wasting my time and possibly wasting a lot of good 243 brass?

Would I be better off trying to trade someone 243 brass for 308 brass straight across? I am a little hesitant on this because I know for a fact the 243 brass has only been fired once since they were the factory 80 gr load that my late father used on coyotes but I wouldn't know the status of the 308 brass.

Any advice or input is greatly appreciated.


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