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Good gracious! ...one heck of a crimp on those 7.62 NATO rounds! Do they chamber well in the SASS?

Maybe the photos don't show it well, but that's just gentle crimp into the bullet cannelure, just like reloading dies can do. Match ammo just has a friction fit, but these rounds are designed for abuse in MGs and rifles. The rounds are NATO-spec, and marked so. I had no problem at all with them in the M1A, but I know they're not up to match standards, and were never intended to be.

I have antique ammo with the case mouth staked to the bullet, and some with a three-piece horizontal crimp at the case mouth. That had to take a special crimping die.

Every time I've tried to put a crimp like that on .308 ammo using RCBS dies, I end up pushing the shoulder back. I can get a small bit of crimp (measurable with a dial caliper), but not like the one in your photo! The die used by the manufacturer must have supported the casing just at the shoulder and below. We've even tried two stage crimping where we seat in one operation, and then crimp in another separate step....same bad results.

Generally, we do NOT crimp. For starters, it creates the requirement that each and every casing be the same length and case neck thickness can affect the degree of crimp. If I'm going to go to THAT much trouble, then we'll load for accuracy and sort...weigh...trim cases, case mouths, spin bullets...trickle propellant charges...the whole nine yards!

We've seen the three part crimp! Those were the bullets that were way, WAY off axis! We used these for testing a .308 subsonic round and these particular bullets weighed 147gr. These bullets key-holed the target practically EVERY time at 50 yds. Hornaday 178gr A-Max bullets did NOT. Granted, the whole subsonic "thing" is wet-finger science and there is a lot wrong about spinning a .308 bullet at such low velocities... but those three crimp bullets really do poorly past 300 yards even with full strength loads. We fired a string at a target only 200 yards through an STG-58 that we have here and one of my boys (an excellent marksman) was able to keep all five rounds on an 8.5x11" piece of paper. Then we used an accuracy reload using 150gr FMJ-BTs. He put these all inside of "about" 1.5 inches.

I would imagine that you wouldn't want to fire these out of the SASS unless it was absolutely necessary.