Reloading newbie, Am I playing with fire?

[alexbekjr]

Hi all,
loading

[Bill Steele]

The Barnes bullets are longer than their lead counter parts, so the OAL will be a problem. If you end up with the same OAL as the lead cored original, you will have seated the all copper bullet significantly deeper than the original. This will almost certainly increase pressures in the resultant load.

There are other problems related to neck tension, crimp, etc. But these issues are small compared to the above.

Not recommended.

Get a press, get some books, learn to do it properly.

[ns3v3n]

Yeah I wouldn't do it unless you have the proper equipment. Paying $2-3 per round is better than having a kaboom in your firearm and injuries. Single stage presses are cheap enough, look at Lee's.

[Sunwolf]

Unknown powder+changing bullet weights or lengths =problems.

[alexbekjr]

Yupp, I checked the FMJ vs the TSX and there is almost a .20/inch difference. Even with the long throat of Mosin/nagants, this is too new and thusly dangerous territory for me.

[Divernhunter]

They are also made of different material. The solid copper bullet will not compress like a jacketed bullet thus requiring a different powder charge.
If you want Barnes ammo buy it at whatever the price or buy the proper reloading tools/supplies and load it yourself. Also buy the BARNES Reloading Manual to get the correct info to safely load barnes bullets. I suggest the Lyman manual to read to understand how/what you are doing. It will also have good data for reloading regular bullets in it.

[Fjold]

The Barnes bullets are built with relief grooves to reduce the bearing surface and have less friction compared to conventional cup and core bullets of similar weight (not length).
The reloading guide for Barnes used to tell you that you usually have to add 1/2 - 1 grain of powder (depending on case capacity) of a conventional bullet load to get the pressure (velocity) back up to normal for similar weight cup and core bullets.

Saying that, it's not a good idea to swap components in fully loaded rounds because any change in the recipe from a factory load invalidates all the pressure data that was used to build that cartridge.

You still need reloading equipment (or even just a Lee hand loader) but when we used to make "Mexican match" ammo (replacing bullets from military hardball loads with match bullets):

1) Pull the bullets from ten bullets
2) Empty out all the powder and weigh it as a lot
3) Divide the total powder charge weight by ten (to find the average)
4) Calculate 95% of the average and put that amount of powder in each case
5) Seat the new bullet

Test the load and if it's safe, (no pressure signs) repeat it with a 98% load and if that's safe then swap bullets with 100% powder loads.

[alexbekjr]

Mexican match huh? So I wasnt too crazy.

[Divernhunter]

Please consider that the 7.62X54R uses a .310 bullet and not a .308 bullet in factory form. Yes some reloaders use .308 bullets in them. The only Barnes .310 bullet is 123 grs and for the 7.62X39 cartridge. It should also work well in the 7.62X54R cartridge. But it should have a different powder charge/type.

No one said you were crazy. Just that it was not a good idea doing what you suggested the way you suggested. I have done the mil surplus thing subsituting hunting bullets of same(or very close) weights for the FMJ bullets. It is best to resize the neck but not always needed. If you used .308 bullets in the 7.62X54R cases you would need to resize the neck to accept the smaller bullet. Accuracy may also suffer using the smaller bullet.