Scrounging Old 30-40 Brass
Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2024 7:12 pm
We all agree that 30-40 Krag ammunition, weather factory loaded, or hand loaded from components, will continue to be a challenge to keep our old guns shooting.
I always keep an eye open at gun shows, estate sales, gun clubs and even antique malls for "old leftovers". Tattered old paper ammo boxes, half filled coffee cans,
cardboard boxes of estate sale reloading equipment all, will many times yield the scarce cartridge cases. Shooters new to vintage Krags or those who don't handload miss opportunity by
overlooking those dirty icky discolored used unmarked or mis-marked spent cases and someone else's old handloads. Fear not! Keep digging.
Now I'd never trust actually shooting someone else's 50 year old hand loads but I have built up my stock of shootable commercial 30-40 brass buying any Krag stuff I come across.
Remove the mouse nest, disassemble the ammo, clean the brass and inspect every single case. Look inside and out. Discard only those rounds that are too far gone to reuse. Not as many as you may think.
Cleaned and annealed, inspected and measured and sorted into lots by brands will keep our favorite Krags shooting.
I've bought as many as 250 cases in a single dirty coffee can and as few as eight in a used plastic sandwich bag. Just keep hunting, it is still out there.
Jeff the Caterpillar man.
I always keep an eye open at gun shows, estate sales, gun clubs and even antique malls for "old leftovers". Tattered old paper ammo boxes, half filled coffee cans,
cardboard boxes of estate sale reloading equipment all, will many times yield the scarce cartridge cases. Shooters new to vintage Krags or those who don't handload miss opportunity by
overlooking those dirty icky discolored used unmarked or mis-marked spent cases and someone else's old handloads. Fear not! Keep digging.
Now I'd never trust actually shooting someone else's 50 year old hand loads but I have built up my stock of shootable commercial 30-40 brass buying any Krag stuff I come across.
Remove the mouse nest, disassemble the ammo, clean the brass and inspect every single case. Look inside and out. Discard only those rounds that are too far gone to reuse. Not as many as you may think.
Cleaned and annealed, inspected and measured and sorted into lots by brands will keep our favorite Krags shooting.
I've bought as many as 250 cases in a single dirty coffee can and as few as eight in a used plastic sandwich bag. Just keep hunting, it is still out there.
Jeff the Caterpillar man.