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LEE Precision (donation of 8x56R expanding pin and 8mm bullet mould)
Wayne Doudna of Custom Cast Bullets, Richland Center, WI (donation of 8mm cast bullets)

CAUTION!: The following article pertains to rifle cartridge reloading.  We make no statements, warranties or claims to the safety of the reloaded cartridges, reloading method or load data.  Reloading cartridges is to be taken seriously and you should only proceed if you feel totally comfortable and willing to accept any and all risks for your actions.  

I finally got around to writing part two of the Berdan primed brass.  First off, let’s recap.  In Reloading Berdan Primed Brass - Part 1, I showed how to put together a simple, cheap yet very effective little hydraulic decapping device that Lee W. sent me the plans for.  That having been accomplished, I managed to find a source of large rifle Berdan primers, oddly enough from a local store.  Then I managed to load up some 7.5 Swiss ammo using the GP-11 Berdan brass and actually fire it without any ill consequences.  I had set out to show you that it could be done, and I did it.  Now, on to the next part.

Having done the major parts, which I think was finding the primer source and making a decapper, I figured that I should put the technique to good use and load up some ammo for a caliber that just BEGS to have it’s Berdan primed brass reloaded.  I chose the 8x56R caliber because mil surp ammo for this caliber does not grow on trees anymore (probably never did or will) and, by reloading the ammo, we could tailor make it so it does not beat the daylights out of you with its nasty recoil.

Figure 1.  Both rods are 3/8” diameter.  The one on the bottom is mild steel.  The one on top is solid fiberglass.  The fiberglass was easy to file down but did not last long.  The mild steel was harder to file down, but lasts pretty much forever.

I found 3/8” diameter pieces of solid fiberglass rod at a local surplus store (those of you in the Twin Cities may know about the Axman on University Ave.)  The fiberglass was easily cut down to size by chucking it into a hand drill and using a file on the spinning rod. 

I have gobs of Nazi marked 1938 8x56R ammo, and luckily I had been saving the brass as I shot the M95 rifle every now and again.  This brass is old, so make sure that each case is inspected for any sort of case issue and discard any that you suspect for any reason.  Other reloaders recommended that the brass should be annealed.  I did not do that.  Mostly for the fact that I do not know a good technique that yields consistent results, secondly because I figure (rightly or wrongly) that I was going to be reducing the load in power to a level that would be safer on the old brass.  Using the same technique as I did with the 7.5 Swiss reloading, I filled the cases with water, placed the case on top of the base.  At first, I tried to place the copper sleeve over the case, but a couple of things changed my mind.  First, I had to replace the 3/8” nuts with 5/8” nuts to allow the wider ram to pass through.  Second, I also had to change ½” coupling to a ½” to ¾” coupler to hold the new 5/8” nuts.  In the end, unlike the 7.5 Swiss decapper, this arrangement did not contain the water spray nearly as effectively and I stopped using it.  I only used the base, placed the case with water onto the base, inserted the fiberglass rod, wrapped a towel around it and smacked it smartly with the mallet.    The fiberglass rod worked great…for a time.  The problem was that as I used the rod, the sharp edges of the mouth of the case sometimes cut into the rod.  Once the rod became “whittled” down in diameter, it stopped sealing the mouth of the case completely and I started to become more and more wet with escaping spray (and not popping primers either). 

The next step in the development was to go with a 3/8” mild steel rod.  Chucking this puppy up in the hand drill and using a file was, well, let’s say tedious to a very large extent.  Eventually I did managed to file the diameter down to something that worked, but it took quite some time.  Essentially the mild steel rod worked just the same as the fiberglass one, but it does not wear out.

Figure 2.  You can cut a section of 3/8” rod off and file it down by putting it in your hand drill.  The mild steel rod takes a long time to take off enough material.  Check it often against the mouth of a case.  A perfect fit will “pop” when it is pulled out of the case.

Now, having said all that, one problem I ran into was the odd case that the mouth was just a hair larger then normal.  I could tell easily which these were as the rod would just slide down into the case and the water would squirt straight out.  These cases just could not be decapped and had to be removed from the batch.  Between the two rods, I managed to get all the cases I had (save the ones with too large a mouth) decapped.  After decapping all the cases, I went through the washing stage like I did with the 7.5 Swiss brass.

Figure 3.  You can use the same base that we used in the 7.5 Swiss article consisting of a 3/8” nut in the coupler.

Figure 4.  Pretty much all you need for de capping your Berdan brass.  A rubber/plastic mallet works better than a metal hammer.

Figure 5.  Fill the case with water.  Place the case on the base.  Insert the rod.

Figure 6.  Wrap an old towel around the rod/case mouth to keep the spray from going all over our face.  And then smack it with your mallet.  You will find that previously reloaded brass will decap quite a bit easier than the original primers.

Once again, in order to size with the 8x56R dies you will need to remove the decapping pin from the sizer die.  Lee provided me with a replacement expander pin for my dies and I used a Dremel cut off wheel to remove the pin itself, just like the 7.5 Swiss rod.  Sizing the brass is just like any other brass, lubing it first.  You should also check the max length of each cartridge as you go through the sizing step.  The max length listed for this cartridge is 2.195”. 

Priming was accomplished like the 7.5 Swiss, using a Lee hand priming tool and a #16 shellholder.  The Berdan primer used was the same also, the PMC .217 Large Rifle Berdan Primer.  Seating the primer, once again, they went down a lot further than I would seat a Boxer primer, but I did not have any misfires at all on any of the reloads.

If you are not familiar with the Steyr M95 rifle (which I was using as my test rifle for the 8x56R caliber), you have to understand that 8mm in this rifle is NOT the same thing as 8mm Mauser (which is actually 7.92mm, 0.323”).  The Steyr shoots a “true” 8mm bullet (.329”).  To prove this, you can review a previous article by Mark and I (http://www.surplusrifle.com/reloading/slug/index.asp) where I slug this particular rifle barrel and measure the bore size at .329”.   Accuracy using a .323” bullet would be dismal at best, I would suspect.

A .329” bullet is not a simple one to go and pick up at your local reloading supply store.  Except for Hornady which recently started to make both the .329” bullet and 8x56R (boxer primed) brass along with loaded ammo in the same caliber, I do not think I have ever seen a jacketed bullet in this correct caliber, except what is on mil surp ammo.   That led to me to look into the possibilities of cast bullets.  Cast bullets are available in all sorts of shapes and calibers and you can always size them down from a larger cast caliber if worse came to worse.  As it turns out, I ended up using two different sources of cast bullets.

Our good friends at Lee Precision make all the items you need to cast and reload the 8x56R caliber.  They offer a .329” RN mould (p/n C329-205-1R) to make your own bullets.  Lee was kind enough to donate one of these moulds and I had a good friend of mine cast up a bunch of bullets in 10:1 lead:tin alloy to try out.  Lee also makes the resizing die set up to size these bullets to exactly .329”, gas check and lube them.  And, of course, Lee also offers the 8x56R reloading dies.

Figure 7.  Copper gas checks in the 32 cal/ 8mm size are needed.  Hornady sells/makes them in packs of 1000.

I took the raw cast bullet from the Lee mould and sized them through the .329” Lee sizing die.  I used a soft lube taken out of Paul Mathews’s book “The Paper Jacket” that called for a mixture of 45 percent (by weight) beeswax and 55 percent clear petroleum jelly.  I used this lube because I did not want to mess with melting down and “dipping” the bullets in a harder lube.  Instead, this lube is soft enough that I could dab a bit on the bullet just prior to sizing it.  It worked well enough for what I wanted to do, but if you wanted to get into a hotter, full powered load, you may want to go with a harder lube.  At the same time as lubing and sizing the bullet, I placed an 8mm gas check on the back end as well.

Figure 8.  I spread a small amount of lube along the grooves with my fingers prior to sizing the bullet.  Do not try to size unlubed bullets.  Alternatively, Lee’s liquid Alox could be used to lube the bullets, before and after sizing.

Figure 9.  After putting on the lube, I placed a gas check on the base of the bullet, most will not stay on and you may have to hold it in place when moving it to the sizing operation.

Figure 10.  Lee’s sizer comes with the sizer die and a base that attaches to your reloading press.  You place the lubed/gas checked bullet on the base then run it up into the sizing die.  The base of the case serves as a collection bin.

Figure 11.  A view down into the holding cup.  As the bullets are sized, they are pushed up and out into the cup. 

I found a second source of bullets from a commercial operation run by Wayne Doudna in Richland Center, WI.  Wayne has literally 100’s of moulds and calibers to choose from, including the .329” bullet.  His mould is a David Moss mould and he offers 175gr SP and FN bullets from the moulds, these being gas checked as well.  Wayne will work with you on your caliber, bullet and alloy needs.  His pricing is very reasonable, figuring that cast bullets cost way less then jacketed bullets.  You can reach him at wdoudna@hotmail.com or at 608-647-8070 as well as at http://www.customcastbullets.com/.  With over 20 years of casting and shooting experience, I found him to be a wealth of information and very willing to work with you on your casting needs.

So the next step was to find load data.  With the Lee 8x56R dies came a short table of powder/bullet combinations that could be used.  I, however, did not have any of the recommend combinations so I scoured the web in search of answers.  I was in contact with several reloaders over on other sites (as well as the Surplusrifle.com forum) and came up with a couple of trial loads that everyone thought would work and that I had the components for.  By the way, Cartridges of the World has two loads listed, both of them use IMR 3031 powder.  This powder did come up again and again in conversations with other reloaders (I did not have any on hand and so did not actually test this powder).

I do have IMR 4895 on hand, and lots of it.  It is a standard favorite of mine.  So that was the test powder of choice.  The load that was decided on was using 43 gr of IMR 4895 under the Lee cast and Doudna cast bullets.  By the way, as I was loading the cast bullets, I first used the Lee Universal case flaring die to open the mouth up a bit first to accept the cast bullets without shaving the base.  And off to the range I went.

First off, I fired several mil surp Nazi 1938 marked full power rounds through the Chrony to get an idea of velocity.  Average turned out to be 2433 fps.  Next I fired both of the cast loads through the Chrony (to see if I was approaching any maximum load issues).  The Doudna rounds came out to be 1961 fps and the Lee rounds came out at 1934 fps.  Well below the mil surp ammo.  That issue was successful, but everything else came apart with these rounds.  First off, the recoil issue was not tamed in any sort of way.  After about 50 rounds, my shoulder, wrist and hand were not feeling all that well.  Secondly, and more importantly, the accuracy of the round did not even approach what I could do with the mil surp ammo at 50 yards (that was my standard, the loads had to do AT LEAST as good as the mil surp ammo).  I mean the accuracy sucked big time.  Matter of fact, I think there were rounds that I fired that I do not know where they went on the target HOLDER.  Back to the drawing board.

Figure 12.  These three types of ammo were used.  Center two are mil surp Nazi marked 1938 original ammo.  The clip on the left holds Doudna 175gr semi flat nose bullets, the clip on the right holds the Lee # C329-205-1R bullets, cast at about 210gr.

Again, the Lee and Doudna bullets were used.  At the range, I started out again checking mil surp ammo through the Chrony and clocked it as 2418 fps, just to make sure I was seeing correct Chrony results.   Next up were the Lee cast rounds which came out at 1540 fps.  Very slow indeed.  (I did not have enough Doudna bullets to run through the Chrony, but I would have to assume the Chrony results would be similar).  But, here is the kicker, or perhaps I should say it NOT the kicker.  The recoil was tamed way way down, down so much that you could actually shoot and really concentrate on the sights and keep the sights on target in follow through.  Accuracy also was much improved, very much so, a lot to do with the recoil.  You have to flip up the battle sights to get more elevation (an artifact of the slow velocity I am sure) but at 50 yards, we could easily print groups ½ the size or smaller than the mil surp ammo.  With this final shooting test, I used up all the cast bullets that I had on hand. 

Figure 13.  A final 3 shot, Lee cast, 50 yard group proved that we have something to work with.  Recoil was mild to say the least.

One thing that I would try next would be to test a slightly hotter load with the IMR 4198 + PSB load to bump up the velocity a bit, not much though, maybe up to around 1800 or so.  Who knows what that would do.  Most likely it would also pump up the recoil a bit, which would not be that big a deal.  I cannot get over how much the recoil was reduced using this load.  It was actually very pleasant to shoot the carbine.  Lot better than being kicked by the Steyr mule. 

So, you can reload the 8x56R with the mil surp brass.  Keeping the loads well below max power not only saves the wear and tear on the old brass, but also really tames the recoil beast of the rifle.  It was a fun project.  Would I do the same for the 7.62x54R?  Not likely as there is so much cheap mil surp and commercial ammo for sale, the time spent popping out the Berdan primers would not be worth it.  This technique could be adapted to pretty much any Berdan primed brass in good shape that you could procure reloading dies for. 

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