In several of my references I find mention of the Swedish military regularly reloading 6.5x55 ammo for target practice. Does anyone know exactly how they depcapped their spent cases on a large scale? I have built and used hydraulic decappers and am familiar with the mechanical type RCBS manufactures. At best, both methods are tedious and time consuming. The hydraulic method may even qualify as a water sport. I am only interested because I have about 1,500 rounds of spent Norma brass which is absolutely pristine.

One might work out some sort of air pressure rube goldberg contrivance but I tHINK even at norma its a labour intensive sort of thing.

I would suggest that you make a nice lamp out of those 1500 pieces of brass. Depriming Berdan primers is a pain, and the cost for new ones is rediculous...

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I'll probably get some flack over this but let me ask some questions and tell some stories old and new. How much time do you want to put into reloading berdan over and over. Yes you can reload berdan. It is more expensive and time consuming. You can decap berdan only once and make it into a boxer type confirguration. This will be a little time consiming but it will be done only once, then you can reload future rounds in a boxer operation.

The old story: When I was young in the early sixties, I found 7.62X54R hard to find(milsurp+norma) and expensive(norma). I shaped the end of a 1/4" bolt to approximate the inside of a Russian surplus round and put this through a board to hold the bolt in an upright postion. Then with a case over the bolt, I peened down the built-in anvil of the berdan case. This operation closes the berdan flash holes and allows the boxer primer to seat. Next I drilled out a single centered flash hole. To get a .210" boxer primer to stay in the .217 pocket, I shimmed the boxer primer with aluminum foil strips until the primer fit very snug in the pocket . It worked O K. Some had a little leakage around the pocket, some had none. I didn't have any serious blow-by problems. It was a long time ago but I think I reloaded maybe 200 rounds this way.

The new story: As I aged and got smarter, I found ammo more available and new and different rifles to shoot. My early experiments were a dim memory until recently when noticed a few posts by people wanting to reload the 7.5 swiss(scarce but getting better). One person said that he did something similar to the method I had used except that he used coping or notebook paper instead of foil. I think he called it 20# paper. Another poster said that he was doing the same but using cloth instead of paper. Although I had some leakage around the primer pockets, neither poster mentioned any leakage with their methods. It does mean that they had no leakages.

I'm not recomending any use any of these methods. If anyone wants to experiment with new loads, techniques,guns or whathaveyou: Use a long string to pull the trigger until you are sure of you ways. Good luck and good shootin

Bobster,
I, too, used to reload 6.5x55 with Berdan primers. I used the $6.00 Lachmiller (now RCBS $48.95) decapping tool.
At that time Berdan primers were cheaper than Boxer. Now they are around a nickle apiece from Old Western Scrounger. I experienced no inconvenience loading Berdan.
I believe that I have read that Scandanavian factory reloading uses a mechanized hydrolic system.
We need to call on Doc AV; he has more experience with Berdan loading on a production basis than anyone I know of.
I have swaged the anvil, redrilled the flash hole and swaged the pocket up once on a case that used a small Berdan primer. That embrittled the web and head, and left cracks where the original holes were drilled.
I have contemplated drilling out the end of the spent Berdan primer and removing the Berdan anvil, then pocket swaging the old primer annulus and pocket to .210" for the large rifle Boxer primer...almost like loading the old Winchester protected primer.
Cheers from Darkest California,
Ross

Geeeez, don't you folks have a life???? Work a couple of hours of overtime; beg on a street corner for a few hours (I will work for boxer primed brass) Remember, You have shop time and range time. For every moment of shop time you use, that's a moment of range time you've lost.

I see you really don't understand the word, "compulsive."