Twmaster
Member
I own a CZ52 chambered in 7.62x25 Tokarev. I absolutely love the thing. It's a terrific pistol.
One problem I've had is getting reloadable brass. Most surplus ammo is Berdan primed and steel jacketed. This makes it near impossible for me to reload and I cannot shoot steel jacketed ammo at the range I frequent.
Modern factory ammo is spendy and few shops stock it.
I've heard mention here amongst those who shoot and reload 7.62 Tokarev guns that one could convert .223 brass.
Anyhow, a buddy of mine has a book on cartridge conversions. He mentioned there was a page for making 7.62x25 out of .223 Remington. I got a scan of the page. It's not hard to do. You need some .223 brass, a set of dies and a way to trim the cases.
Let's get started!
Take a .223 case:
Cut to a bit more than 1" long: (I used a tubing cutter)
Run this through your sizing die:
Next, Trim the case to length (.988" is max length) prime then expand the mouth, seat the bullet to length.
This is a Remington case. Some military brass like from Lake City may have to have the inside of the case mouth thinned a bit. This Remington worked with no more than trimming and sizing.
I ran the loaded round back through my resizing die with the decapping pin removed. My CZ52 is kinda picky about case width at the mouth.
Here are three rounds, Converted .223, Surplus Romanian and a reloaded Prvi case: (L to R)
The converted case chambers and ejects just fine. I'll hopefully have a range report this weekend.
This was not hard to do. I do not have a lot of money so being able to trade my available time to rework free brass is good in my book.
Hope this is of some use to fellow 7.62x25 shooters.
One problem I've had is getting reloadable brass. Most surplus ammo is Berdan primed and steel jacketed. This makes it near impossible for me to reload and I cannot shoot steel jacketed ammo at the range I frequent.
Modern factory ammo is spendy and few shops stock it.
I've heard mention here amongst those who shoot and reload 7.62 Tokarev guns that one could convert .223 brass.
Anyhow, a buddy of mine has a book on cartridge conversions. He mentioned there was a page for making 7.62x25 out of .223 Remington. I got a scan of the page. It's not hard to do. You need some .223 brass, a set of dies and a way to trim the cases.
Let's get started!
Take a .223 case:
Cut to a bit more than 1" long: (I used a tubing cutter)
Run this through your sizing die:
Next, Trim the case to length (.988" is max length) prime then expand the mouth, seat the bullet to length.
This is a Remington case. Some military brass like from Lake City may have to have the inside of the case mouth thinned a bit. This Remington worked with no more than trimming and sizing.
I ran the loaded round back through my resizing die with the decapping pin removed. My CZ52 is kinda picky about case width at the mouth.
Here are three rounds, Converted .223, Surplus Romanian and a reloaded Prvi case: (L to R)
The converted case chambers and ejects just fine. I'll hopefully have a range report this weekend.
This was not hard to do. I do not have a lot of money so being able to trade my available time to rework free brass is good in my book.
Hope this is of some use to fellow 7.62x25 shooters.