After a bad afternoon of decapping a bunch of mixed carbine brass I realized that a number cases were Berdan primed and therefore taxing my Lee Universal Decapper. I had no idea that carbine brass was ever manufactured with Berdan primers.

As I recall, the headstamp indicated that Lake City was the source and that makes it even more curious. Does anyone have more info on this apparent anomaly?

Thanks

I had some of it a long time ago, and broke a decapping pin on it. The story I got, not verified, is that it is some sort of 'sanitized' ammo, and that the headstamp LC stands for 'Lower China'. I think it's corrosive, too. If anyone has any hard information, I'd sure like to hear it.

I have seen that cartridge. It is made in China. I have no idea why they used a Lake City headstamp.

Yes. Your brass probably is marked LC 52. The Chinese copied captured ammo right down to the markings. I found some at the range last year there was something that looked strange with the primer sealer so I looked in the case and found it was berdan primed. LC stands for Lake City Arsenal.

Thank you all, very much. 625Smith is correct, it is stamped LC 52. Clever these Chinese. I will keep the bag of mutilated cases and figure that as a rarity they will sometime command a ridiculous price. Might as well, I seem to keep everything else and have two garages and a basement to attest to that!!!

I will say that the Lee Universal certainly earned it's keep. The cartridge case was extruded through the new flash hole I made with the decapper pin!

If you want to decap them without endangering your decapping pin, try filling them halfway with water, and punching out the primer with a wooden dowel fitted to the case and a small hammer. Homemade hydraulic decapper. Cheap too.

That is the story I heard too. I had some of this ammo several years ago and it shot fine. FWIW I wouldn't bother with trying to reload it, I am not sure it even takes a berdan primer size that is available. There are many sizes and only a few are available. It would be a bust to go to all of that work decapping brass that you couldn't find primers for.

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too TOO young!!

I bought a full case of this ammo once. It shot ok but I sold the remainder of the case telling the buyer that it was berdan primed and probably corrosive. O k if you clean your gun properly.

Sorry to dredge up such an old thread, but I did a Forum Search before posting to see if this subject had ever come up.

Last week I loaded a batch of 30 Carbine brass, some of which I had picked up on shooting ranges going back 20 years or more.

I was surprised to encounter Berdan Primed cases in the batch I was loading. Fortunately for me, I was using a Lee Carbide Sizing Die, so the only damage done was displacement of the de-capping pin requiring it to be repositioned in the collet.

Also fortunate for me; there were only six of these cases among the 200 plus batch I was reloading, and as mentioned in the above posts, they are all stamped LC 52.



Y'all be careful out there.

Attached Images

BERDAN PRIMED 30 CARBINE BRASS.jpg (49.2 KB, 109 views)

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Dave Brown
SWCA #3279

There are various stories about the Chinese "LC 52" .30 Carbine ammo you can find on the internet. I found a batch of fired LC 52 cases at a range once, and they all had Berdan primers. For some unknown reason, they also had expanded bases, they looked somewhat like belted bases. I could never understand how that could have happened. I believe those primers were corrosive. Corrosive primers were also used in French-made (the French Foreign Legion used lots of WWII U. S. Carbines after the war) and Dominican Republic-made .30 Carbine ammunition. Shooting corrosive-primed ammunition is most definitely to be avoided, as it can cause corrosion inside the Carbine's gas tappet chamber, and there is no easy way to clean it.

I've seen the LC 52. Broke a pin on it too. In time people will find all of it and we won't have to deal with anymore.

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That's just somebody talkin.