I'm preparing for hunting season with my newest buy a Yugo 24/47 in 8mm mauser. I am planning on pulling the FMJ 196 grain bullets from some surplus ammo, evening out the charges and reseating a 180 grain nosler ballistic tip bullet.

The 180 grain slug is a little shorter than the 196 so I wondered, should I seat the new shorter slugs to give the same overall length?

Thanks,

Bennypapa

You can, however you might try seating the bullet to match your gun instead.
Measure the throat with either a Stoney point tool or with a partially sized dummy case and find out where the lands start. Then you can play with the seating depth of the new bullets and find out where your gun likes them.

I am curious about the partially sized case method since I don't have a stoney point tool.

I have plenty of spent brass cases and a set of dies.
How do I go about this?
Will I need to seat a bullet?
What do I do?

I'd like to accomodate this gun as much as possible rather than start making changes to the gun. I am still learning to shoot big bore rifles and this was the cheapest way for me to get range practice AND have a decent hunting rifle as well.

Thanks

Assuming the ammo from which you plan to pull the bullets works through your magazine OK, I'd leave the OAL the same when seating the new bullets.

Now, what do you mean by "evening out the charges"?? Do you plan to, say, use your powder scale to weigh ten charges, calculate the average charge weight, then put that same exact amount of powder into each case using a powder scale to weigh the new charges?? If so, then what you propose is probably safe-but I don't believe it would be safe to "even out" the charges using any other approach! Weighing the charges with a powder scale is the ONLY WAY of deterinmining what the present charge actually is!

It would be just as effective to pull the 196-grain bullets and immediately replace them with the 180's......

Push an empty (no primer or powder) fired (not resized) case in the shellholder.
Start the case into the sizing die just enough to squeeze the neck to the point where it just barely holds the bullet.
(You want to to hold the bullet in place lightly, and you should still be able to push the bullet in with finger pressure.)

With the base of the bullet barely in the case mouth, carefully chamber the dummy round. As you lock the bolt down it will push the bullet into the case and tell you how deep the bullet sits when touching the lands. (If the bullet doesn't get pushed in it tells you that you have a lot of freebore in the rifle and just seat the bullets to the longest that you feel comfoprtable and will fit in the magazine.)

Push the bullet in to the case another .010" into the case for safety . This will be the maximum length of your loaded rounds.

Check to see that the dummy case fits in the rifle's magazine and will cycle through your action flawlessly.

IMPORTANT: For your loaded rounds push the bullet at least .010" DEEPER into the cases to keep the bulles from jamming into the lands and giving you higher than expected pressures. Also, if you have to remove a loaded round from the chamber the bullets won't be jammed into the lands and pulled from the case when the loaded round is ejected.

You can experiment with seating the bullets deeper .005" at a time to find the most accurate depth for your particular rifle.

quote:

It would be just as effective to pull the 196-grain bullets and immediately replace them with the 180's......

It would be safer and more effective.

Some years ago I was pulling Carcano bullets and replacing them with soft points. Most of the powder that came out was about an 1/8" long as thick as spegghetti and about the same color.The color varied fro a yellow brown to a dingy whitish yellow. Upon continuing I ran into some from the same lot that looked similar to 4895. I'm not telling you to give up your technique but letting you know that immediate replacement can be safer than mixing all that powder. roger