While out at the range last Saturday practicing, I fired off the remaining 50 rds. of a box of 100 for the 7-08 Remchester. As some of you know, this was a Model 70 SA in .243 Win. that was shot out. About 2 years ago I fitted it with a 24" 7-08 SS Remington factory take off barrel. Rather than give or trade away the 200 R-P twice fired empty brass, I just sized them up to 7mm using a Sinclair expander mandrel.

No annealing was done to the cases either before or after expanding the necks. I am sure that on a microscopic level they took a beating with this much stretching but they appeared OK and normal looking to the eye. None were lost to splits at up sizing.

A favorite load for this rifle is a Hornady 162 gr.BTSP with 38.0 grs. of RL-15 and a CCI 200 primer of course.This was the load used for the life of the brass. While inspecting the cases the other day I saw that a few had split necks. A 100% inspection showed that 95 out of the 100 had a split to some degree. This lot of brass was loaded and fired four times in the 7-08 re incarnation and two as the original .243 for a total of six firings. Not too bad for the torture and abuse they received.

Time for the recycle bin at work for these and out come the other 100 cases.

I polished off some of the carbon for better viewing.

http://s766.photobucket.com/albums/xx302/seveno8/brass/

My uneducated guess is you got your good out of those...

Well Bob its time for some new brass chico !! They might have lasted longer if you necked down from a larger case instead of neck up from smaller since the brass gets thinner...But you knew that allready. Hows the weather been to you guya over there in Co...can you shoot yet.

My 243 brass gets thicker at the neck as I fire them. I have had to turn them down a couple of times.

Malinois, we have lost the last 3-4 HP matches and a couple of SB 's to bad weather. It's just the way it is during winter in these parts. A few of us get in some trigger time on the better weekend days. We dont have a big following of HP shooters here in CO to begin with. It is rare to get enough shooters together for a HP match in winter. We'll get back at in the spring.

And just today I heard we lost one of our semi-regular HP shooters as well cause he moved to Phoenix! Now just because they shoot every silhouette game known to man, every week, year around, does not mean you have to move there!

girl from PHX......this is all your fault! You hijacked one of our shooters!

McAlice...a mans gotta do waht a mans gotta do...wonder how long them boots are gonna hang from the flagpole???
Innocent

I hear you Bob...sorry to hear about the weather...wish I could complain about loosing a hi-power match hell we dont have one to loose !!!!....but the testing goes on on my 260 til I can get out west to shoot. other than PA I dont think any one shoots hp east of the mis river. but luckly I can shoot small bore about 15 min from home everyday with ole hambone..but tuesday is our usual shoot lunch and shoot some more day..