In my quest to build up my stock of .308Win ammo, and finding the local supply of .308 brass to have dried up, I tried an experiment. Having a fair amount of useless-to-me .243Win brass, I tried resizing them to .308. They came out pretty good - they miked as only about .5mm shorter in the neck. Not a problem. I loaded ten with the same powder and bullet load as my regular .308s, and shot them at the range in my Spanish FR8 short rifle. They shot as good, even slightly tighter, than the normal .308 loads! Functioned flawlessly. So now, I'm loading about fifty more. This will cover me til the supply of .308 brass evens out. I will anneal the cases before loading them again. Tried resizing a .30-06 shell too - man, that is a loonngg neck! These will definitely need cutting down and trimming - but I don't need to do them just yet.
I don't need a whole lot - I just wanted a decent supply to use for occasionally shooting my two .308 Mausers. I'm hoarding my supply of 7.62X51 for my CETME, when TSHTF!
The .243 seems like a popular round in some areas -- could you place an add on a reloading board to exchange for .308 brass? I read an article a while back about someone using .243 to resize for 260 Remington (6.5). It seems like they said that the brass worked fine, but wore out earlier (plus they had to have a tool for "truing" the neck). I'll try finding the article when I get home...
It's so bad in my town, I've considered buying 100 rounds of .308 blanks like they use at military funerals and cutting the top off of them, resizing and loading them up. Are they boxer or berden primed? Will the existing primers work?
ar10 says you can -- http://www.handloadersbench.com/view_topic.php?id=7098&forum_id=5&jump_to=55872#p55872 Obviously, fire before cutting.
Well, I converted all my .243Win brass - and it has proven as or more accurate than the original .308 loads. I'm happy. After shooting them, I will anneal the necks before reloading again - this should help prevent premature demise of the cases. Next project - convert a bunch of .30-06 to 8mm Mauser. Stay tuned....
you can also resize 270 into 308's as well , and if you shot those all to pieces then cut down the 270's , 243's, 30-06's. and 308's into .45's
Along the same lines, 5.56 nato can be trimmed down to be used as 9mm in a pinch. I used to use old .223 casings turned down and renecked so I could reload for my C-96 Mauser. It worked well. I also used to play with 7.65 Argentine. I used 270 or 30'06 brass, trimmed and reshaped. I didn't have a problem with the inside neck thickness, but with bore diameter. It turned out that my particular Mauser had a .308 bore, not a .311 like most Argentine's.
Can't use the Blanks because the brass is too thin, it won't work. I'll be looking for some .243 brass. Also .308 can be cut down to make .45
