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Looking for .308 Norma Magnum brass, or ammo.


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6 hours ago, SR71BLACKBIRDXX said:

Still working on it. My uncle was in North Carolina. Should be home today. He thinks he has some.

Thank you so much for keeping up on this and keeping me in the loop.

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4 hours ago, XXitanium said:

Sorry if  I came off the wrong way, I've only ever done one cartridge, but I did a lot, and liked my results.

No 'wrong way' taken here.  I happen to have a thing for under-resizing cases so your words and the link hit home, bullseye.  I don't fully agree with the Larry's opinions, but he's a pro and I'm not so my theories may be bullshit.  The special resizing die they sell for belted magnums might be in my future, normal resizing dies don't get that area right above the belt and I think that's starting to become an issue with my .338 after firing the same cases several times.

 

Which cartridge did/do you do and was it a precision thing or plinker?

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Sorry.. No dice. He just has loaded rounds, no brass. And doesn't really want to part with any. I told him what you were trying to accomplish. He said it might be easier to neck up a 7mm mag. Might need fire forming though. Anyway sorry bout that. I can send you some 7mm brass to try it you go that route

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41 minutes ago, SR71BLACKBIRDXX said:

Sorry.. No dice. He just has loaded rounds, no brass. And doesn't really want to part with any. I told him what you were trying to accomplish. He said it might be easier to neck up a 7mm mag. Might need fire forming though. Anyway sorry bout that. I can send you some 7mm brass to try it you go that route

Thanks for trying.  I'll look up the 7mm conversion and see.

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2 hours ago, XXitanium said:

 

Blue marker on a case and cycle it?

Black marker you racist.  Yea, it rubs it off just forward of the belt.  I've looked up the case dimensions from two sources, they don't completely agree with each other but both show the critical areas around the belt of the .338 being only .001" bigger than the Norma.

 

The testing has all been with a Winchester case.  I grabbed a Remington and it was visibly different.  I put the calipers to it and sure enough, it's several thousandths smaller in the suspect area.  Resized it to .308 and it chambered with ease, Yahoo!

 

I then tried a Winchester case in the .338 and it was tight.  They look brand new, maybe they were fired and cleaned & polished to perfection.  Along with the Win cases were some FC, those also measure bigger and are tight to chamber in the .338.  The Remington brass I've been using has been fired a lot and mostly only neck sized, once in a while I encounter a tight one, but not as tight as these Win and FC cases.  Strange mystery, but I have a pile of Rem brass so the problem appears to be solved.

 

Thanks to XXTi and the link I now know there's a special die I can use to resize the area just above the belt, but it's over $100 so I'll hold off.

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2 hours ago, SR71BLACKBIRDXX said:

Sorry.. No dice. He just has loaded rounds, no brass. And doesn't really want to part with any. I told him what you were trying to accomplish. He said it might be easier to neck up a 7mm mag. Might need fire forming though. Anyway sorry bout that. I can send you some 7mm brass to try it you go that route

If he doesn't reload I'd love to have it whenever he does shoot some up.  My problem appears to be solved, but it would be cool to have the right stuff, I'll send him some beer money for the effort.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Following this thread a bit. I don't shoot but I find it interesting. I decided to look up the prices of the Norma ammo.........crap! You're approaching 50BMG price territory!  All the reviews I saw called the Norma round an excellent round but rare. Did it just not catch on?

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3 hours ago, rhubarbray said:

Following this thread a bit. I don't shoot but I find it interesting. I decided to look up the prices of the Norma ammo.........crap! You're approaching 50BMG price territory!  All the reviews I saw called the Norma round an excellent round but rare. Did it just not catch on?

Pound for pound, the Norma is WAY more expensive to shoot than the .50, but maybe still a bit cheaper per shot depending on what cartridge you shoot.  There's lots of 'cheap' MilSurp .50, no cheap Norma stuff.  From what I've read, what killed it is the .300 WinMag.  When the Win came out they pushed it harder and got it out to the masses, Norma apparently didn't even try.  They're quite similar in power, the Norma is said to have some advantages stemming from the case/chamber design, when used in a properly chambered gun.  Apparently there's the Norma standard for how a chamber should be cut, specifically with a long throat to better handle hotter loads, and the run of the mill norm of having a fairly short throat.

 

Mine has the longer throat, and it's strange.  With most guns if you load a bullet too far out it'll jam into the rifling when you chamber it.  With the Norma I can set a bullet so far out that it's barely hanging onto the case and it barely touches the rifling.  Having that extra space allows you to seat the bullet farther out leaving space for more powder in the case and when fired it lets the bullet jump out easily minimizing the initial pressure spike from that hot load.  The Norma can be loaded to velocities just shy of 4,000FPS without going outside of published loading guidelines.  For comparison, a typical AR15 will give around 3,000FPS with a bullet that's well under half the weight.

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Here's two .338WinMag cases, the one on the right has been necked down for the Norma's .308 bullet diameter.  The little 'bulge' where the bullet is pointing shows how much longer the Norma chamber is.  When it's fired in the Norma the whole front of of the case starting with the big shoulder area will stretch forward just past where that little bulge is (about 1/8") then it'll be properly sized for the chamber, as long as I load it hot enough.  Seems kinda nutty, but it's a fairly common thing done with many cartridges, it's called "fire forming".  Every case is fire formed a little every time you shoot a 'normally' sized case since they're always a bit smaller than the chamber, this will just be a more extreme forming.

 

91BAB428-A033-4E0D-8E6D-130409CB60D8_1_105_c.thumb.jpeg.402900dc813f5e87cdfa48090678b8e1.jpeg

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No point in it now that I can make cheap ammo.  At about twenty to twenty five cents per round it'll be a fun unique magnum plinker.  The brass & bullets were free.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Man, 40 plus years... my memory was that these were the same shell, not just close

 

"Although not identical, the 7.62×51mm NATO and the commercial .308 Winchester cartridges are similar enough that they can be loaded into rifles chambered for the other round, but the Winchester .308 cartridges are typically loaded to higher pressures than 7.62×51mm NATO service cartridges.[4] Even though the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute (SAAMI) does not consider it unsafe to fire the commercial round in weapons chambered for the NATO round, there is significant discussion[5][6][7] about compatible chamber and muzzle pressures between the two cartridges based on powder loads and wall thicknesses of the military compared to commercial rounds."

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M40_rifle

 

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58 minutes ago, XXitanium said:

Man, 40 plus years... my memory was that these were the same shell, not just close

 

"Although not identical, the 7.62×51mm NATO and the commercial .308 Winchester cartridges are similar enough that they can be loaded into rifles chambered for the other round, but the Winchester .308 cartridges are typically loaded to higher pressures than 7.62×51mm NATO service cartridges.[4] Even though the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute (SAAMI) does not consider it unsafe to fire the commercial round in weapons chambered for the NATO round, there is significant discussion[5][6][7] about compatible chamber and muzzle pressures between the two cartridges based on powder loads and wall thicknesses of the military compared to commercial rounds."

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M40_rifle

 

Different pressure specs...different head spacing....different case head thickness and case capacity...

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On 4/16/2020 at 8:16 PM, XXitanium said:

Man, 40 plus years... my memory was that these were the same shell, not just close

 

"Although not identical, the 7.62×51mm NATO and the commercial .308 Winchester cartridges are similar enough that they can be loaded into rifles chambered for the other round, but the Winchester .308 cartridges are typically loaded to higher pressures than 7.62×51mm NATO service cartridges.[4] Even though the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute (SAAMI) does not consider it unsafe to fire the commercial round in weapons chambered for the NATO round, there is significant discussion[5][6][7] about compatible chamber and muzzle pressures between the two cartridges based on powder loads and wall thicknesses of the military compared to commercial rounds."

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M40_rifle

 

Generally speaking it should be safe to use .308 in a 7.62 gun BUT I won't use them in my re-chambered MAS 49/56 (originally in 7.5 French, re-chambered to 7.62 Nato) because it's much higher pressure than the original cartridge and will probably be abusive to the action.  I load at the low end of .308 book specs.  I've heard there are stronger springs available that could help it cope with the hotter ammo but I haven't really investigated.

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I only loaded 5 .308 Norma conversions, didn't wanna waste new .338 brass if it didn't work for some reason.  They ran perfectly and appear to have formed to the chamber.  The necks appear shorter than I think they should be, but haven't measured.

 

I put the first one over the chrono, a 150ish grain FMJ at 3,000FPS.  Bore sighted it, it was way the hell off, then dialed it in some.  The 5th shot hit the target, a spray can at 100ish yards.

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