Just got back from the range.

I've been making brass for my Yugo M57 from .223 brass and it's a chore.

I loaded some .312 diameter Speer 100 grain jacketed HP's over 6.2 grains of Blue Dot a while ago to serve as a fire forming load. I knew it would be very mild, but it wouldn't even cycle the action.

Also, the Lee sizing die didn't set the shoulder back far enough on those cut down .223 cases and the only way they would chamber was to single load them and drop the slide to hammer them into battery,..so I worked it as a single shot.

I'm still just working with fire forming loads, but this time I loaded them with 6.8 grains of Blue Dot.

Also, I took the shell holder to work and removed .015" from it's thickness with a surface grinder so that I could push the case far enough into the die to place the shoulder in its proper position.

The 6.8 grain load cycled the action fine and dropped all of the cases close by. It was also fairly accurate,...as is the Yugo M57. I was impressed by it's willingness to feed the 100 grain Speer hollow point,..which is intended to be a revolver bullet and has a lot of lead exposed at its tip.

I fired 60 rounds today,...mostly just to further process my brass. But even so, the fireforming loads chopped a ragged 3" circle at 10 yards without giving as much effort as I could have.

The 7.62X25 round is a smokin' hot .30 caliber bottlenecked handgun round, and even though the 6.8 grain load capped by a 100 grain bullet served to only be enough to cycle the M57 action, it wasn't all that weak. I haven't bothered to chorny it, but it feels at least as hot at the upper limit of a .32 H&R magnum.

Forming brass for it from Lake City 5.56 cases is a slow, laborious process,...and I've only played with a couple of fireforming loads,..but I'm beginning to develop a feel for what propellants will work well in it and where they should be.

There's a lot of new kids on the block in the propellant catagory, but as soon as I get enough brass properly formed, I'm going to work up some 100 grain, .312 diameter Hornady XTP's over my old friend, 2400.

Tooling up and loading for this handrifle is becoming a very interesting project.

From what I've seen so far, the results are going to be good.