Berdan Primer: The American Invention That Conquered the World (Except America)
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Long article, detailed subject — Berdan primers deserve more attention than they usually get in American shooting circles, mostly because they show up constantly in the ammo we actually buy and shoot, and most guys at the range couldn't tell you the first thing about them.
There is a persistent irony baked into every spam can of surplus 7.62x39 that lands on an American range table: the primer igniting that round was invented by an American, adopted enthusiastically by the rest of the world, and largely abandoned in its country of origin.
That's the kind of thing that should come up more at the LGS counter. You're feeding your AK with an American invention that America decided wasn't worth keeping — and the reason is purely cultural. We built a reloading culture, and the Berdan design doesn't play well with that.
For military arsenals running high-volume production with no expectation that soldiers would be hand-loading in the field, it was a practical choice. For American civilian shooters who built a culture around reusing brass, it was a dead end.
This is the whole story in two sentences. Every time someone new to reloading asks why they shouldn't bother saving their 7.62x54R brass, this is the answer. It's not impossible to reload Berdan — it's just slow, tool-dependent, and not worth it when commercial brass is available.
Roy Marcot, in Hiram Berdan: Military Commander and Firearms Inventor, includes a statement by Major Treadwell alleging that Berdan essentially copied a primer and pocket designed by Colonel S.V. Benet, who was Frankford Arsenal's Commanding Officer at the time.
Wouldn't be the first time someone with rank and connections got their name on another man's work. Berdan was apparently good at two things: long-range shooting and self-promotion. The Sharpshooters history is genuinely impressive — the primer credit is murkier than most people realize.
Decapping a Boxer-primed case requires working around two or three off-center flash holes with no central channel to guide a pin. Specialized tools exist — the RCBS Berdan decapping tool, a two-rod system that hooks the rim of the primer and levers it out — but the process is slow and the tools are not universally available. Breakage is common enough that RCBS's lifetime guarantee on decapping pins gets a knowing aside.
Anyone who's tried to reload Berdan-primed cases on a Saturday afternoon and ended up with a bent decapping rod by 2pm knows exactly what that "knowing aside" means. The lifetime guarantee is appreciated. You will need it.
Discussion question: Have you ever actually reloaded Berdan-primed brass — and if so, was the cost savings worth the headache, or did you swear it off after the first batch?
Read the full article in The Handbook → | By The Boise Gun Club Team
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