Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Have a bunch of 7.5x55 Swiss brass you've saved Update

in the hope that you could use it someday?
Short time ago I took a leap: guy had some Tula Berdan primers, and while he didn't know if they'd fit the 7.5 cases, they did fit 7.62x54r.  Called a friend who did some checking and thought they were the same size, so I grabbed the brick.

Last night I took five cases, deprimed and resized, and primed.  These went through my Hornady hand priming tool with no problem, and felt just like boxer primers going into a case when seated.  I've loaded those five with the cast-bullet load, and next time I hit the range I'll try them.  Looks like this'll let me use that bag of brass I held onto.

Remember, if you want to use berdan cases you have to take the deprime/neck expander piece out of your resizing die, and use some kind of berdan depriming tool to get the old primers out(I've got one of these, and BLEEP! the price has gone up!)

The primers I got are Tula KV-7.62N Large Rifle Primers, Berdan.
Added: should have put this in originally, got them from
J&N Supply.  Don't have a website, so
3261 S. 124 Rd.
Flemington, MO  65650
417/253-4200, 417/298-3635
JNSupplyllc@yahoo.com 

4 comments:

Gerry N. said...

I had a K-31 for a while and didn't feel like mortgaging the homestead to buy some brass, Norma being the only boxer brass I could find, at about a buck an a quarter a piece. So I did some research and learned that .280 Win. has nearly the same dimensions as 7.5x55 Swiss except the head is rebated and is .30-06 sized. So I bought some, resized it in a Lee FL Sizing die. It fed and functioned perfectly. No messing around with berdan primers.

I had one small problem, the shoulder was a bit far from the head, so I chucked a shell holder in my little lathe and ground .002" off the top, allowing the brass to resize a wee bit further. Trim as per normal and Bob's your uncle.

I painted that shell holder neon green with some nail polish to keep it separated from my standard ones. I also marked it "7.5 Swiss" with a carbide tipped vibro-marker.

This may work for you.

Gerry

Firehand said...

I lucked out. Found out shortly after bought the rifle that .286 Winchester could be resized and trimmed appropriately, and got a bag. Then lucked into a place that had Prvi 7.5 brass, and got a bag.

I still saved all the Swiss brass; I just hated to toss stuff of that quality into the recycle box. So it sat and I kept looking to see if I could find any primers so wouldn't have to pay Hazmat charges on shipping.

Firehand said...

Correction: .284 Winchester brass

Windy Wilson said...

Check out the Swiss rifles message board.
http://theswissriflesdotcommessageboard.yuku.com/btheswissriflesdotcommessageboard

There is a link there somewhere that describes the process of converting Berdan into Boxer.
It might be more than you want to do, but I keep all my GP-11 brass, too, and am looking to source the other stuff just in case I can't buy more.
And Privi is some fine reloadable brass, IMO.