I was looking through a big tub of shot brass that I
keep all my “non reloadable” brass in and was lamenting
on the fact that some of it was just too nice to toss
out (CHEAP, cheap cheap cheap cheap…..). Then someone
pointed out to me that one CAN get Berdan primers here
in the US. One thing led to another and what follows is
my experience in reloading Berdan primed brass.
First off, let me say that I still stick by our current
statement that reloading Berdan primed brass is more
labor intensive then Boxer primed brass. No getting
around that fact. Second, this article is an attempt to
show you the technique how you can reload with Berdan
primers, it is not intended to offer up the exact
perfect accurate load for your Swiss rifle. That is for
you to work up. In essence, I am going to show you that
the rounds that I loaded using the technique described
did indeed go BANG (in the right direction). |
|
|
|
What’s the difference?
Berdan vs. Boxer Primed Brass |
|
 |
|
In a nutshell, Berdan uses an anvil “teat” that is
built into the base of the cartridge. There are two
flash holes on either side of the anvil. |
|
 |
|
The Boxer has the anvil built into the primer cup
itself. Boxer brass has one large hole to pass the flash
to the powder. |
|
 |
|
Primers on right are PMC Berdan Large rifle. They are
firing side up. A thin foil like material covers the
primer compound itself. The Boxer large rifle primers on
right show the anvil inside the primer cup. |
|
|
|
A Little History: |
In general, Berdan primed ammo tends to be the stuff
that is imported from overseas (Europe) and is the “mass
produced” mil surp ammo that may be brand spanking new
or decades old.
Boxer primed ammo seems to be a “US only” product, but
in fact it is being made overseas as well.
I found it interesting to learn that both Berdan and
Boxer refer to the surnames of Army officers who
developed their respectively named priming systems.
Oddly enough, Colonel Hiram Berdan was an American and
Colonel E.M. Boxer was a British officer. Colonel Boxer
actually designed an entire cartridge that used a coiled
brass case with an iron base. Whereas the Boxer
cartridge was made obsolete, the Boxer primer was so
well designed that it has pretty much remained unchanged
over the years. American Colonel Berdan developed both
his priming system and a cheap method of drawing brass
to form cartridges. I find it ironic that the American
invention became the standard in Europe and the British
invention became the standard in America.
Source: The Book of Rifles, Smith et.
al., 1948 |
|
|
|
Reloading Issues: |
If you have done any reloading at all, you know that one
of the very first steps is to deprime or decap the
brass, that is to remove the spent primer. In Boxer
brass, with its single hole, a pin (usually part of the
sizing die) is pushed down and through the flash hole
and pushes the spent primer out. This does not work for
Berdan brass, indeed, if you accidentally try to decap
Berdan brass using a regular die, you may end up with a
bent or broken decapping pin. Reloaders take heed. Check
your brass. You cannot tell from the outside whether the
brass is Boxer or Berdan. You have to take a light and
look down into the cartridge and see how many flash
holes there are.
BEFORE you start to reload your Swiss brass, you should
inspect each piece to make sure that it is still intact,
with no corrosion marks, no major dents or dings.
Discard any brass that does not look normal.
So, how do you decap Berdan brass? That is the $64,000
question. |
|
|
|
The Cheap Guy’s Decapper: |
|
There are several methods floating
around that work, some easier than other, and with a
great variation in cost. In researching this topic (and
in the spirit of keeping things CHEAP), I ran across
information on the web provided by Lee W. Basically,
Lee came up with a way to make a Berdan decapper that
uses the hydraulics of water pressure to pop the spent
primer. |
 |
|
The cheap basic components of Lee W. decapper. |
1. 3/8” nut
2. ½” copper coupling
3. 3 ½” copper tubing (1/2” diameter)
4. ½” to ¾” coupling
5. 3/8” nut
6. 5/16” clevis pin (not shown) |
|
|
1. To assemble the device, place the 3 ½” copper tubing
(3) into the ½” coupling (2) and solder using the same
technique as soldering a water pipe.
2. Place 3/8” nut (1) into ½” coupler (2) and tap nut
until it is flush with top of coupler.
3. Place 3/8” nut (5) into the ½” to ¾” coupler (4) and
tap nut until flush with top of coupler. |
|
 |
|
Complete assembled unit. Clevis pin is located at
bottom left of photo the slender end of the pin has a
slight bevel put on it to help the insertion. |
|
|
|
To Use the Water Decapper: |
|
|
|
 |
|
Fill the case with
water. I found filling from a bucket to be easier and
faster than trying to pour water into the mouth of the
case. |
|
 |
|
Place the
water filled case onto the base of the decapper. |
|
 |
|
Place the top portion of
the decaper unit over the case and press it into the
base. It forms a nice tight seal with the base. |
|
 |
|
 |
|
Place the clevis pin
into the top of the device through the 3/8” nut, which
helps center the pin. The pin will stick up, seen in
the right photo, and is ready to be smacked. |
|
 |
|
Using a plastic mallet, smack the pin smartly. The
decapper unit keeps the water spray contained. |
|
 |
|
Disassemble the unit. There
may still be water in the case which you need to dump
out. Note the primer sitting on the towel. |
|
Once you have decapped the brass, it’s a good idea to
wash it completely in soapy water to remove primer
particle as such. In the case of the GP-11 Swiss brass,
it was not corrosively primed, however other Berdan
primers are corrosive in nature and therefore you will
need to wash the brass to remove the corrosive salts. |
|
|
|
My Way of Washing (and Polishing)
Brass: |
|
|
|
You have seen other articles on Surplusrifle’s web site
about
liquid cleaning brass. I have a vibrating type
cleaner as well. I like using the liquid cleaning method
for fired brass. There is less mess, no dust, and it is
much quieter. Health wise, it is a better method as
well, with no lead dust from the polishing compounds and
you do not need to pick pieces of tumbler media out of
the brass either. The downfall is that it takes longer
to clean via the liquid method as you have to allow time
to dry the bass. With the two drum tumbler, I can do
about the same number of pieces of brass as the vibrator
type, an added bonus being that I can clean two
different sizes of brass without having to sort the
brass after cleaning. |
|
 |
|
The Chicago two drum tumbler. I purchased a rock
tumbler (two drums) from Harbor Freight tools (about
$35). |
|
 |
|
I learned of using Jungle Jake’s from the guys at the
range. It’s an all in one degreaser/cleaner. A couple of
capfuls in each of the drums and away you go. Cost for a
gallon (available at Fleet Farm) is about $4. |
|
 |
|
With a two drum tumbler, you can clean two different
sizes of brass at the same time. On the left, a few
rounds of 7.5 Swiss, you could put about 25 pieces or so
in a drum. On the right are 50 pieces of 5.56mm. |
|
After you place the brass in each drum, fill the drum
with hot water, add 2 or more capfuls of Jungle Jakes
(or similar cleaner/degreaser), seal up and tumble for
at least an hour. The longer you tumble the cleaner your
brass seems to be. As a side note, if you just place
your brass in a bucket, fill it with hot water and add
about ¼ to ½ cup of Jungle Jake’s to it, swirl and let
it sit over night, this will also yield very shiny clean
brass, assuming you do not start out with really crappy
stuff. |
|
 |
|
Once the brass has tumbled for at least an hour
(longer if really dirty), I dump the contents of the
drum down the sink. I pour the brass into some netting
(from a bag of oragnes) and then repeatedly dunk/drain
them in hot water. Finally, I roll them around inside
the netting to get all the water out. |
|
 |
|
The final step is to place the brass on some sort of
cloth and place them somewhere to dry. During the
winter, near an air duct works well. In the summer, I
put them near a dehumidifier. If you wanted to dry
quicker, you COULD put them in the oven…but I would not
recommend it. Into the hot summer sun may be a better
option. |
|
|
|
Loading the Berdan Primed Brass: |
So now your brass has been cleaned and is ready to be
sized. If you were to use your Boxer primer sizing die,
you would probably ruin it at this stage. Obviously, the
decapping pin would break, bend or (in the case of the
LEE dies) pop out. To alleviate this issue, I got a
second expander for my LEE 7.5 Swiss sizing die and then
cut the decapping pin off with a Dremel tool. The 7.5
Swiss has a very sharp shoulder on it. Check to make
sure that the sizing die is forming the shoulder
properly.
Once the cases have been fired in your rifle, you could
probably back off the die to only size the neck enough
to accept a new bullet. The LEE expander rods (as you
can see in the photo) is fairly long before the actual
sizer comes into play. Keep that in mind as you back the
die out if you try to only neck size. |
|
 |
|
Unmodified Expander on the Top. |
Now you should lube the case and size it as you would
with Boxer primed brass. After that you should check
your brass length and trim as you would normally as
well.
Before I got to repriming the Berdan brass, I noticed
that the flash holes were not quite up to the white
glove test. The liquid cleaning had removed a lot of the
crap, but there was still some flakes left in the primer
pocket. You cannot use a standard primer pocket
cleaner/reamer in a Berdan pocket with the anvil in the
center. So I came up with a CHEAP idea.
I went to a local hobby store and bought a packet of
floral stem wire, used to hold flower stems nice and
straight. It is fairly stiff wire, but is soft in
nature. A pack of 40 18” wires cost like $2. I took
approximate 12 or so of the wires, cut them down to
about 6” and then wrapped them together with electrical
tape to form a “brush” of sorts. Being that the wires
are not tightly packed together like a store bought
Boxer brush, the wires will bend around the anvil to
clean the primer pocket out. |
|
 |
|
Wrapping about a dozen of the floral stem wires
together will give you a wire brush to clean the primer
pocket out. Chuck it into your cordless drill to make a
power cleaner. |
At this point you will want to check to make sure that
the two flash holes are clear of debris. This is best
accomplished by holding the case up to a strong light
and look through it to make sure the two holes are
clear.
Now, where to get Berdan primers. Berdan primers come in
various sizes. The ones you will need for the 7.5 Swiss
are the .217” or “Large Rifle Berdan”. I was lucky. I
was able to pick up a box of them from a local reloading
store. Cost wise they were exactly the same as your
standard Federal, CCI or Winchester types, which
surprised me. Other sources of the primers are Old
Western Scrounger, Grafs, and Midway. Be aware that if
you order them via mail, you will be paying a haz-mat
shipping tariff. As far as I can tell, no one MAKES the
Berdan primers here in the US, rather they import them.
The PMC ones that I have came from Russia.
To reprime the brass, I used a LEE manual primer seater.
Use the large primer seater. I do not think that the
self loading primer seater should be used, the Berdan
primers are similar in size to large rifle Boxer
primers, but are different enough that they may not
behave the same in a feed mechanism. |
|
 |
|
The correct LEE Primer shell holder for the 7.5 Swiss
is #3. PMC is one company of a couple that imports
Berdan primers. |
|
|
|
When
you reprime the brass you will notice that the primer
seats deeper than a boxer primer. Apparently, the
primer itself is slightly shorter than the primer pocket
on the case. I tried seating the primers at various
levels, from flush to all the way down and then dry
fired them. All of them went off. Seems that primer
depth did not make all that much of a difference. In a
bolt action rifle it is probably not that critical,
however in a semi auto, it could be drastic to have a
primer seated to shallow leading to risks of slam fires.
Once
you have the brass primed, you can load the cartridge as
you would a Boxer primed cartridge. From what I have
read on the web, powder loads and bullet selections are
the same as Boxer primed ammo.
The GP-11 7.5 Swiss
Loaded with a 174gr spitzer bullet, it reaches 2640
fps velocity. It generates about 45,000 psi of
pressure. The round saw service in converted 1911
series rifles, K31 series rifles and the Stgw 57
assault rifle into the mid 1980’s. It is not safe
to fire this round in the Model 1889 Schmidt-Rubins
because of pressure levels.
I
loaded some 173 gr. GI FMJBT bullets over IMR 4064
powder and also some 168 gr. Nosler Competition bullets
over IMR 4895 powder. I selected these based on the
fact that was what I had on hand! I am sure there are
dozens of pet loads out there. Hence, this article is
not to address pet loads, but rather test and report the
reloading Berdan cases.
Some Range Results:
I
checked the velocity of standard GP-11 ammo as well as
the two hand loads that I put together. The average
GP-11 velocity was 2631 fps, the 173gr reloads were 2345
fps and the 168gr reloads clocked at 2376 fps. Accuracy
on targets at 50 yards was decent enough. I did not
have a whole lot of rounds to test fire on hand, but the
reloads consistently grouped as well as the GP-11 ammo.
What
I will do now is deprime the brass, clean it again and
try to reload it with only sizing the neck of the case
and see if I can get the bullet to seat as well as have
the case chamber correctly.
Russell Corbitt (who manufactures obsolete ammo from
conversion, see
http://surplusrifle.com/shooting/reforming8x56/index.asp)
did point out to me that it is entirely possible that
Berdan primed brass will only load 4 or 5 times with
dependable ignition. This is because the anvil in the
case gets flattened upon repeated firing. After it is
deformed, the primer no longer will ignite and the case
is useless. He also points out that the cases of the
ex-military brass ought to be annealed so minimize the
chance of splitting necks upon firing (see the above
link to Russell’s article for annealing instructions).
On the flip side, Lee W. has reloaded 1000’s of GP-11
brass with no issues.
As I
pointed out at the beginning of this article, I did this
to try out the method of reloading Berdan primed brass.
With the cost of the mil surp ammo being so low, there
are few, if any, calibers that are worth going through
the extra efforts of Berdan priming. I chose the 7.5
Swiss because it is a common round with lots of
reloading info. The mil surp GP-11 ammo is more
expensive then most all other mil surp ammo, but it is
also a much higher quality ammo then the tin cans full
of 7.62x54R. Indeed, 7.5 Swiss brass is available
Boxer primed as well.
I
have proven the point and shown you that it can be
done. In a future article, we will tackle a less
available round, the 8x56R as fired from the M95 Steyr
carbine. This ammo comes and goes on the surplus
market, so I figure it would neat to try out something
that could be more useful in the future when it dries up
completely. |