7.62x51?
Yep, 7.62x51mm, 7.62 NATO, and .308 Winchester are all the same round. There are some differences in case wall thickness between the military 7.62 spec and the commercial spec. The brass is thicker for the military, i have heard, because military primers are very weak to prevent negligent or accidental discharge. The weaker primers, however, cause pressures to be too low for consistent trajectory. So they compensated by beefing up powder. Kind of lame. it's a relic of days when mass production manufacturing could not produce the uniform results that it does today. the thick cases also resist being ripped apart by the violent action of the extraction process. military rifles are very merciless and do not care about your brass. that is because they want to function flawlessly and keep you alive. the expended brass must be extracted positively and quickly. thin commercial brass gets wrecked. military brass is more resilient.
the problem is most of it is berdan primed, which is much harder to reprime than commercial brass. the solution? buy already sized and primed once fired brass from a company that has a machine that does it. that also makes reloading much faster since all you have to do it drop in your measured charge and cap it with a bullet seated to the proper case depth. And you are done.
Sorry if this is TMI. i just thought a smart guy like drew might get a kick out of the explanation ... even if he already knew it.
Levi
Actually, this interests me greatly, btw. I'm thinking about getting into hand loading mostly because I'm autistic that way, and find mundane repetitive tasks to be relaxing and particularly rewarding when there is a physical pile of finished products to see afterwards. My dad used to have a machine to make his own cigarettes. I'd spend hours cranking them out happily.
What kind of setup do you have? My understanding is that I need to do a fair bit of reading and research before getting started - for obvious reasons. Any info you've got would be good.
-Drew
