Other Peoples Handloads. Prizes and Pitfalls.
Greetings All,
The other day I was given a box of .303 cartridges. This happens from time to time when people know you still have a .303 and actually fire it and take it into the bush from time to time. There were three boxes of new recent FMJ boxer primed cartridges. Joy. I can use these for our iron sight shoot and save my soft points for other purposes. In an ice cream container there was the usual collection of berdan primed military cartridges. These will be passed on to someone more interested in them than I.
Also in the box were about 25 handloads and this is what this post is about. Now some would shoot of the handloads to reclaim the cases but I don't shoot anyone else's handloads unless I know what is in them. There was no data with them and regrettably I can't ask the person who loaded them. Some had cast lead projectiles. One load had a cracked neck so I pulled the projectile and found a small charge of flake powder with a tuft of Dacron or something tamped down on top. We used to do this before we got Trail Boss. I had to use a long screw to pull the Dacron before I could get the powder out. There were also some soft point handloads Most of these were in DI 1941 and 1943 cases. These cases are boxer primed and were made in Canada. For no particular reason other than I want to I use DI cases in my Canadian made Longbranch scoped .303. Some of the soft point loads had new primers and what looked like AR2206H. Some appeared to have had the original projectile pulled and a new projectile seated over the original charge. Some of the powder had clumped and needed to be dug out with a screwdriver. It had clearly deteriorated. I don't know if these would have gone off at all or developed very high pressure and don't intend to find out. The primers will also be corrosive so they won't be snapped in my shiny scoped rifle barrel but in my ex target iron sight barrel which has seen plenty of corrosive primers already. The barrel will get the boiling water treatment after firing to halt any corrosion.
So the point of this post is to think hard before you fire someone else's reloads. Instead pull the projectile, dump the powder and snap the caps. You will be able to reuse the cases, after inspection. The handloads may have been OK or perhaps not and less and less people seem to know about corrosive primers these days.
Regards Grandpamac.
