My first careless reload

[07JKX]

I have seen a bunch of threads with people admitting stupid mistakes they had made so I figure I should fess up on mine.

I am very meticulous about inspecting brass, sorting, cleaning, sizing, and trimming. I caught my mistake at the moment before I loaded the bad round in my .308 bolt gun.

I recently ran into a decent lot of mixed .243 and .308 brass that I found in a rifle range. I scooped it all up and sorted through it when I got home. I sat the .243 aside and begin depriming the 308 brass.

Long story short, I pick up my next "308" round to load and fire and looked at the head stamp and caught my error. Low and behold, a .243 went through the whole reloading process... cleaned, sized (in .308 dies), trimmed, reprimed, loaded with 43.1 grains of varget, topped with a 150 grn nosler partition and factory crimped at 2.800"

Looked identical to all the .308 rounds I had loaded.

Not sure what, if anything bad would have happened, but I will be even more thorough in sorting my brass in the future!

--- Dunkel said I should make a key chain out of it as a reminder... but nosler partition bullets are expensive and I am cheap, so I salvaged the components and made a REAL .308

 

[strokin99]

Wow, that was a close one. I reload 308,243, and 7mm08. I know how easy it could be to make this mistake. Sorting the 380 and 9mm brass is tough as well.

 

[07JKX]

yeah... .308 and 243 are shockingly similar with the only real difference being should height and neck length/width. I kept the old .24308 (lol) and am going to measure the case dimensions when I get home. I think when I resized it and trimmed the neck, it essentially turned it into a .308 case. Case body and base diameter and rim specs are all identical (from the factory) and even the specs from the head up to the base of the shoulder is 1.5598" for both the 308 and 243

although not a good practice, I am now curious if .243 could be reloaded to .308 in a SHTF scenario. I dont believe that .243 would be a "common" post apocalyptic caliber, but every bit of knowledge helps

 

[passdaboolits]

I'm fairly sure the .243, 308 and 7mm08 are all formed from the same blanks.
What you did resizing up is not unheard of at all. Usually got to do a bit of trimming an you may end up with the neck brass abit thin. Anyhow odds are you would not have a catastrophic issue but good lesson learned. I've done similar by mistake as I load both .243 and 7mm08 easy to get mixed.

 

[Shovelhead]

All step children... I doubt anything would have happened. As a matter of fact I use 308 cases for 7mm-08 and 243. 308 is much more available as range fodder pickups...

 

[07JKX]

All step children... I doubt anything would have happened. As a matter of fact I use 308 cases for 7mm-08 and 243. 308 is much more available as range fodder pickups...

Yeah.. I had read that it is pretty common place to resize a .308 to a .243... just never saw any info on the other way around.

 

[jglenn]

yep all are based off the 308/30-06 case.


difference in neck thickness when you size down a larger case but.."might" well have been ok

way back when a lot of these rounds were all wildcats( 7 x308, 6x 08 6.5 x08) we simply necked down 308 or a 30-06 and then cut the neck thickness

25 -06(neider) we made from military 30-06

 

[Twitch2120]

necking high to low usually requires you to neck turn. low to high just works the brass real hard and will thin the neck a bit. if you make a habit of making 243 to 308 make sure to anneal the neck and shoulder as it work hardens the brass and will kill case life. also its a good idea to neck up in stages. 243-260-708-308

 

[snatch3838]

When sorting sim molar cases I stand them up on a table so I can see th hight difference

 

[Bypass]

.243 is a necked down .308 it would have fired just fine. All you did was turn a .243 into what it was origionally.