Berdan primers

[Guest canebreaker]

I looked, but couldn't find a thread on the subject. May have been in another thread. Most of the cases are steel and aluminum, but some brass is out there. How do you reuse it? I knew I saw a story, thread somewhere of someone that made a jig to remove the primers. I found a jig for sale on ebay yesterday. It's made for 1 cal. so you may need several. It's marketed by Vortac240 out of Maritta, GA. He had a starting bid of $19.50 and $5.20 shipping.

I heard of drilling out 1 of the flash holes and using boxer primers. I thought boxers and berdans were different sizes.

[Jonnin]

the primers are hardish to come by, on top of being a pain to work with. Some folks rig up a system to remove them with water pressure.

I do not know how to do all this stuff but a good place to find discussion on it is the milsurp dedicated forums at gunboards.com. They were excited late last year that some berdan primers were going to be available and were all getting ready to buy it up as fast as it came in.

[Westwindmike]

The Berdan primers just hit the suppiers here in the States. There is a big thread over on CastBoolits about it. I think that Grafs is carrying them for now.

[Guest canebreaker]

I saw them at reloaders bench and the armory last time there. That was about 2 years ago.

I don't reload berdan, just entering this info for those that wish too.

[Guest nicemac]

With the hassle they cause and the availability of brass that doesn't represent that hassle, why bother?

(seriously)

[Jonnin]

With the hassle they cause and the availability of brass that doesn't represent that hassle, why bother?

(seriously)

some calibers are difficult to find in boxer. Not very many, thankfully.

[1gewehr]

A reliable, but wet, way to remove Berdan primers is to fill the case with water, use a wooden dowel that fits snigly into the case mouth, and rap it sharply with a stick. The primers usually pop right out. New Berdan primers go in just like a normal Boxer primer.

FYI, Hiram Berdan was an American, and Edward Boxer was British. Strange, how we ended up using Boxers and the Brits use Berdans as standard primers.