I have about 1000 rounds of radway Green surplus 308. In the past I had an HK that destroyed brass so I used to pull the bullets, reweigh/recharge the powder, and seat a hunting bullet.
I now have a DPMS LR308 and not much money for high quality ammo. So I'm thinking about doing the same thing with the Radway stuff and reloading it with a 168 or 175 gr HPBT bullet....basically meaning that I just need to buy the bullets. I'd reduce the charge by a calculated percentage reusing the powder. I'm pretty sure the powder will be consistent as I'll be recharging with my powder dispenser.
My concern is the consistency of the berdan primer in the surplus brass. I don't have a chrono and I'm only trying to create some usable ammo that I can learn to shoot out to 600m max. Has anyone ever done this before? Or does anyone have an opinion of the consistency/ reliability of the berdan primers? My opinion is that they have to be fairly good to meet NATO standards. I know that the Army will kick back an entire pallet of ammo if a couple rounds drawn from a randomly picked box don't meet their standards which are extremely high, sending a lot of good ammo to the surplus stack for us to buy at a pretty good price.
I now have a DPMS LR308 and not much money for high quality ammo. So I'm thinking about doing the same thing with the Radway stuff and reloading it with a 168 or 175 gr HPBT bullet....basically meaning that I just need to buy the bullets. I'd reduce the charge by a calculated percentage reusing the powder. I'm pretty sure the powder will be consistent as I'll be recharging with my powder dispenser.
My concern is the consistency of the berdan primer in the surplus brass. I don't have a chrono and I'm only trying to create some usable ammo that I can learn to shoot out to 600m max. Has anyone ever done this before? Or does anyone have an opinion of the consistency/ reliability of the berdan primers? My opinion is that they have to be fairly good to meet NATO standards. I know that the Army will kick back an entire pallet of ammo if a couple rounds drawn from a randomly picked box don't meet their standards which are extremely high, sending a lot of good ammo to the surplus stack for us to buy at a pretty good price.
