A customer of mine posed an interesting reloading question to me which I am unable to
answer. He’s getting a case of Cole Distributing’s Mil-Surplus Yugoslavian (50’s mfg)BRASS-cased, BERDAN-primed 8mm Mauser ammo from me, and has ordered some 9x18 Makarov ammo which is also BRASS-cased, and BERDAN-primed. He hates the idea of throwing all that brass away, and would like to reload the Berdan-primed cases with Boxer primers. Can he drill a centered flash-hole into the cases, and handload them, (mainly to lighter loads) SAFELY? What pressure/ignition/primer issues are we dealing with here? Is this brass up to being reloaded? I HAVE seen this done before, but I really question the practice. I load
primer-only propelled wax bullets for indoor practice in 9mm Para; (FUN
) without
enlarging the flash holes. And then there’s Winchester’s “Win-Clean” cases which I’ve
read have larger flash-holes than their other loads, and specifically are marked as
non-reloadable, yet several people have been reloading them with no problems. What do you guys (and gals
) think on this one? Thanks- Dakotan