ZVS Ammunition- Report

[twarr1]

I found some (rare) brass cased 7.62x39 ammunition at a LGS today so I bought 3 boxes, 60 rds, to plink and recover the cases for reloading. They are ZVS Ammunition, made in Macedonia. Fired about half of them. They performed terribly. Velocities were all over the place and my Ar-47 locked up a couple of times. I decided to not fire the rest, a few of the primers were flattened.
Later, I went to deprime the empties and found they are Berdan primed. Nowhere on the box does it say Berdan. Non-corrosive - Check. Non-mercuric - check.
My fault for assuming they were Boxer because they are brass. I’ll pull the bullets and recover the fertilizer. Hope it doesn’t kill the grass.
I thought I’d share as I expect more no name brands to try to fill the vacuum left by the Russian ban.

 

[AJC1]

I found some (rare) brass cased 7.62x39 ammunition at a LGS today so I bought 3 boxes, 60 rds, to plink and recover the cases for reloading. They are ZVS Ammunition, made in Macedonia. Fired about half of them. They performed terribly. Velocities were all over the place and my Ar-47 locked up a couple of times. I decided to not fire the rest, a few of the primers were flattened.
Later, I went to deprime the empties and found they are Berdan primed. Nowhere on the box does it say Berdan. Non-corrosive - Check. Non-mercuric - check.
My fault for assuming they were Boxer because they are brass. I’ll pull the bullets and recover the fertilizer. Hope it doesn’t kill the grass.
I thought I’d share as I expect more no name brands to try to fill the vacuum left by the Russian ban.

I picked up a pile of brass cased last night just to have for trading. Guess I better try and deprime a few.

 

[twarr1]

I picked up a pile of brass cased last night just to have for trading. Guess I better try and deprime a few.

If you end up with a bunch to trade I’m interested.

 

[FROGO207]

You could take the depriming pin out of the sizing die and run them through, then drop your good propellant load you use already for that weight bullet and reseat the bullets. At least being able to fire them once.

 

[AJC1]

If you end up with a bunch to trade I’m interested.

They are s and b seem all boxer primed. Not a huge pile but at least 50.

 

[twarr1]

You could take the depriming pin out of the sizing die and run them through, then drop your good propellant load you use already for that weight bullet and reseat the bullets. At least being able to fire them once.

I thought about that but I’m not sure how much difference the Berdan primer would make. There’s no data for Berdan.
But I already broke them down.

 

[CoalCrackerAl]

Can a center flash hole be made via drill?

 

[AJC1]

Can a center flash hole be made via drill?

Yes but the primers are a different size. You may be able to use a pocket uniformer but I am not familiar with that web.

 

[BigBlue 94]

Yes but the primers are a different size. You may be able to use a pocket uniformer but I am not familiar with that web.

Time to slice one lengthwise and see!

Obviously a deprimed one...

Do boxer primers care if they have a central flash hole or a pair of off-center ones?

 

[FROGO207]

I have done the propellant swap with 7.62X54 rimmed Russian steel cased ammo and it worked out splendedly. Just don't try for max load on the first round. Work up.

 

[Soonerpesek]

Don't Berdan cases have the anvil in the case head, as opposed to it being in the primer...?

 

[FROGO207]

Yes. That is the case.------See what I did there.

 

[N555]

I'm pretty sure I have a few zsv 223 brass in the junk pile, they were brass and boxer primed.

Can a center flash hole be made via drill?

Yes.
I had a pile of berdan brass I experimented with reloading at the start of the plandemic.
I figured berdan primers would remain available because they were always cheep and available. No one ever seemed to want them. Nope, I think stupid wantabe reloaders and stupid new reloaders bought them all, not knowing what they were, sending remaining stock of berdan primers into gouge prices territory. Lucky I had several sleeves of primers I got from an estate sale, a guy was there buying up all the lots of primers and I asked if I could buy some of the berdans off him. He just let me have them.
I didn't wasn't the random berdan case breaking my decapper so I drilled the berdan anvil with a 5/64 drill bit, flattened the anvil. Now they can be sized and decapped with the all the boxer primed brass. Then reprimed with a .217'' berdan primer, used boxer anvil sitting on a 5/32'' ping-pong ball circle, which is just a spacer.

I load them same as the boxer brass. It would seem a large primer is a large primer.

 

[GeoDudeFlorida]

Years ago I bought a bunch of Gevelot (France) .38Spl ammo from SG. It was cheap - REAL cheap! - and for good reason. Mixed cases of older and newer box ammo. A few boxes were older than the rest, probably made under the occupation. They were Berdan primed and loaded with some kind of ball powder under a 140gr. FMJ-RN. They burned clean and were pretty accurate from a 4" revolver but the priming was corrosive. No big deal. A few were probably just post-war, early 1950's or so, before the red-and-yellow box. They were Boxer primed, corrosive, loaded with some flake powder I couldn't identify and what I'm pretty sure was using horsehair filler under a 160gr-165gr LRN, very inconsistent. Those were dirty and inaccurate. The rest of the case - around 1400 rounds in 50-round boxes - was Boxer primed, non-corrosive, loaded with some powder that looks a lot like Red Dot without the dots - sans horsehair, thank goodness - with a LOT of graphite flash suppressant and a lead 158gr. RN. Typical 1960's police-issue ammo. Those are very dirty but at least fairly accurate at 15 yards. Those cases are made from very thick brass.