Questions about 7.62X39...

[masek77]

1) What brass is considered to be the best to reload?In reading past posts I get the feeling that generally Remington brass is preferred, but I wanted to ask to be sure. Apparently the cartridge works well with small primers... Is that true in your experience?

2) My reloading books say to use .308 to .311 for the bullets. Thats a pretty wide open area. What size do you use and why?

[Badnews Bob]

You need to know what your barrel dia is to know which dia bullet to use, My handi rifle and my SKS both like .311 to .312 dia bullets, But a lot of rifles have the .308 bore, Slugging your barrel is the best way to determine this.
 I use winchester brass They take the large primers. No problems at all, I can't say if the remington stuff is any better or not.

[bluebayou]

I don't think that you can find Remington brass anywhere.  Lapua and Winchester seem to be the only choices now.  Slug your bore with lead sinker and a wooden dowel to push it through.  I used a 1/4" dowel to good effect.  I am going to try .310 Hornady and .311 Sierras in my new SKS. 

[steve4102]

   I have three kinds of 7.62x39 brass.  Win., Rem., and Lapua.   Lapua is by far the most consistant and accurate of the three.  Winchester gets the prize for the most inconsistent and accuracy suffers.   Remington brass is much better than the Winchester , but it is hard to find.  I do not see 7.62x39 brass listed on Remington's component page anymore.  The only place I have found new Rem brass for the 7.62x39 is Ebay.

   What rifle are you loading for?

[bluebayou]

I would agree that the Winchester brass has to be the crappiest brass that i have ever seen.  I have zero complaints about Winchester brass in 223, 7-08, 270, etc, just this 7.62 brass has been out of round, short, long, dented, etc.

[Awf Hand]

Hey Masek,

I'm going to be shooting CBA BR matches this (hopefully) summer with a 7.62x39, and I'll second what others have said about the Lapua and the Winchester brass.

I bought 200 pieces of Lapua brass and sorted it all by weight.  70-80% of it was within a plus/minus 0.3gr range.  The high was 126.4gr with a low of 125.1gr and the mean around 125.7gr.  The mouths were all factory annealled, as I suspect that most folks just buy this stuff and reform it into a PPC.  These have the large primer.

The Winchester brass has been relegated to backup or offhand brass.  I began to weigh and found the inconsistency to be disturbing.  In addition to this, the primer pockets gave a very inconsistent feel when seating a primer.  Some almost fall in, while others scrape hard as they're being rammed in.  These also have the large primer.

My rifle has a .308" bbl and shoots well with .310" and .311" GC (sized) bullets.  I"ll further second that you need to check your bore to determine what diameter works the best.  I'll go on to say that when you buy your reloading dies, make sure that they have the correct components for the bullet diameter that you've selected, as some don't.

I'm searching for some small primer Remington to experiment with, but the quality of the Lapua brass makes me doubt that the large vs small primer comparison is going to offer much in the way of enlightenment.

[masek77]

Well, to tell you the truth fellas, by the time Im done I will have 14 rifles chambered in 7.62X39. Most will be ex Yugoslav military but also Romanian and Polish rifles. ALL will have original barrels.

[R.W.Dale]

 Check this thread out where I did some testing with a 7.62x39 with various bullet diameters. In short with my .310 barreled CZ527 there is NO diffrencd in group sizes between shootin .308 and .311 diameter bullets.

http://www.gunboards.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=151420

I POSTED THIS PREVIOUSLY ELSEWHERE

It's been pretty hotly contested as to how much diffrence there is between loading 7.62x39 using .308 bullets vs .310-.311 so here it is. I tested this  and here are the results.

The rifle is a CZ527 carbine topped with a 3x9x40 redfield accutrac scope. The bore measures .300 land to land and .3105 in the grooves

The ammo was loaded with 150 gr Sierre soft points 10 rds of .308 and 10 rds of the same bullet sized .311. Cases were Remington CCI 400 , The powder was 23.5grs of Re-7 with a COL of 2.310

It was about 65 degrees today with a light varible breeze of 15 mph

Shot string 1
.308 bullets

1851
1826
1852
1827
1846
***************
Shot string 2
.311 bullets

1935
1904
1937
1912
1925
****************

Shot string 3
.311 bullets

1953
1888 !?
1915
1932
1925
***************

shot string 4
.308 bullets

1852
1855
1869
1844
1873

All velocities were taken at 25 feet.

As you can see there is very little diffrence in group size. About the only real measurable diffrence in using the .308 dia bullets is that they are somewhat slower in the FPS department.

Of course your mileage may vary.

[masek77]

Thank you very much krochus.

This is exactly what I was looking for.