Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Anybody doing anything with Berdan primed brass?

I've got a batch of Eastern bloc Berdan primed .30-06 and .308. Curious if anybody is doing anything with these.

I throw it in the brass bin to either be cast at a later date, or sold for scrap.

I reload mine I just remove the primer hydraulically, I do so by filling the case with water and plundge a dowel down the neck with a small hammer. Works every time I learned to do that during they anointed one tenure. There was an ammo and component shortage back then also, necessity is truely the mother of invention.

Dean

I'll probably throw them in the recycle bag and sell as scrap, too. With the plandemic, I'd worked down every stitch of brass I had on hand. Tumbled with stainless steel pins and either sold, traded, or kept for my own stash.

The Berdan primed cases were the last of everything I had that was unprocessed.

My uncle used to deprime them using a pick and a hammer

I've got a heap of 8x57 brass Berdan primer style, a home made hydraulic decapper (appropriately sized coach bolt with the thread cut off, and lee loader shell holder) and RWS Berdan primers but use mainly boxer primed brass these days - it's easy enough to get and easier to reload, no need to make the process more involved.

Where would one get Berdan primers? I can ever recall seeing them available anywhere.

I've seen that done. A guy in AK had a youtube video during the anointed one's tenure. He showed himself depriming the case as you mentioned. Primed and reloaded it. Then stuff the round in an AK and go outside and fire it off. That was with a steel case, no less. Not brass. Pretty amusing.

Is The Old Western Scrounger still doing business?

My set up was pretty simple one of those red folgers coffee cans filled with brass and enough water in the can to just cover the brass. A shell holder that I had held in a vice, and another coffee can to put the deprimed brass in that and an old towel on the floor to catch the water. Easy as pie it's the loading that got really creative especially they AK rounds, I use to load the cases with pistol powder since I could get more rounds per pound, "remember componets were scarce" that and I did not want to use my "good rifle powder" so 10gr of pistol powder and paper towels, toilet paper, kleenex napkins, cotton balls, ect to fill the void in the case, and here's the kicker sometimes AK bullets and sometimes 303 british bullets I kid you not, a yes the good old days LOL

Dean

Pretty darn creative, sir.

Mine goes into the scrap brass bucket to subsidize the beer fund. Some reloaders use the as bullet jackets when they swage bullets.

Trying to get an 1895 Dutch Mannlicher in 6.5x53R going I drilled the fired Berdan primer out, to .210" leaving the cylindrical portion of the primer in the case, drilled a center flash hole and seated Boxer primers in the case with the old Berdan as a "bushing". Very time consuming and annoying but at that time 6.5x53R with Boxer priming was scarce as honest lawyers. Gingerly, a couple grains at a time, I worked up to full published loads with no failures or leakage.