LC 7.62 brass to 308 WIN ETA 77 Lake City Match

[TurdFerguson]

Dad left a good sized stash of 7.62 brass that he was using with a M1A shooting service rifle 90's-00's. Its already sized and primed. He used federal br primers. He worked the brass in 06 or so, I assume the primers may be dead but it was stored in a ziplock bag in a fairly dry area of the house.

Ive been shooting 168 grain SMK with 43.5 grains IMR 4895. I know I need to test it but I've read to reduce the powder loads 1-1.5%. Hodgdon starts at 41 grains 4895. Is it safe to start there or do I need to reduce it further?
Thank you.

 

[straightshooter1]

Dad left a good sized stash of 7.62 brass that he was using with a M1A shooting service rifle 90's-00's. Its already sized and primed. He used federal br primers. He worked the brass in 06 or so, I assume the primers may be dead but it was stored in a ziplock bag in a fairly dry area of the house.

Ive been shooting 168 grain SMK with 43.5 grains IMR 4895. I know I need to test it but I've read to reduce the powder loads 1-1.5%. Hodgdon starts at 41 grains 4895. Is it safe to start there or do I need to reduce it further?
Thank you.

IMR 4895 is a little slower burning than H4895, but not much slower. Hodgdon sets max load at 42.3 grs, but I've fired 43.0 grs of it pushing 175 SMK's, which I was getting pressure signs (not much surprise when I look at my QuickLoad app that's telling me the pressure is at 62,357 psi, which is a little above the 62,000 psi SAAMI max). IMR set max of of their's at 44.2 grs. When I take a look at the numbers calculated by the QuickLoad app for 43.5 grs of the IMR4895 pushing a 168 gr SMK (@101.5% cases capacity) , the pressure is calculated at 59,941 (pretty much right at SAAMI maximum). Of course, these pressures will vary depending on just how how you load the cartridges, like loading the case longer to increase case volume reduces pressure.

So . . . I'd say it's not a good idea to start at 43.5 grs, but 41.0 would be a good place to start. When I use 41.0 grs of H4895 and get pretty good results and the QuickLoad app says I'm at 95% case capacity the way I load it and getting pressure at 53,973 psi (which seems to be a pressure zone that produces good results for a number of powders I've tried).

 

[918v]

Play around 42 grains of IMR4895 with 168s in the LC case.

 

[TurdFerguson]

Bumped to add that the brass is LC 77 Match. Does match brass have any differences?

 

[918v]

Not from that year. 60’s vintage match brass was better.

 

[m1match]

LC 7.62 brass is pretty durable. In the 90s I bought a case of 2000 new unfired LC 94 Match brass from the Civilian Marksmanship Program and I'm still shooting it. I shot it in my Garands in NRA Highpower competition for almost 10 years and shot it in my 308 precision rifles to this day. Its pretty good brass and has lasted 10 reloadings or more if properly resized and loaded. I say properly sized, because once I didn't check how much I was sizing my cases and ended up bumping the shoulders of my cases around 0.010" or more and that brass started getting case head separations after 3 loadings.

My go to recipe in 7.62 for M1 Garands and for my bolt guns was 42.0 grains of IMR 4064, CCI BR2 primer, and Sierra 175 Match Kings. Today I've got a lot of RE15 and I load the same load but with 42.0 grains of RE15 with almost identical results as with IMR 4064.

In 1998 before the AR became common in NRA Highpower service rifle competition, most competitors were shooting M1-As (or M-14s for the military shooters) and one of the most common loads was LC cases, Fed 215M primers, Sierra 168 Match King, and 41.8 grains of IMR 4895. I can almost guarantee that if you use that load you will have pretty good results.

 

[Skeptic1]

"Dead primers"?

I've never had any primers die on me. I've always stored them in an old common plastic ammo can and never worried about them. Have you experienced that old primers go bad?