I prefer not to reload Berdan, but because of supply disruptions and the decline in surplus market, I explored ways to reload Berdan, specifically .308. There is a lot of good brass .308 to include Portuguese, S. African to name some. I first tried the RCBS Berdan decapper, and that didn't work out so well for me, and in addition, I would need to order new pins that invariably broke on it in the process of decapping. I then saw a guy on eBay year ago sell a hydraulic method of decapping for various calibers at a good price. This will get you wet invariably and you need a tight mouth to get it to work, the water needs to be directed on the primer and not shoot backward to you, so there may be a time or two you need to head back to the resize die to resize the mouth. But this works. Just takes a while. If you can do this outside in hot weather, this is good.

Then you can resize the case without the decapping rod.

After you get a resized case without a primer, you need to get the new primer in. I don't see a good way to do this, but put the primer on the table and use the case to press into it. Unlike Boxer which is deeper, I seem to be able to seat the primer in without a specialized tool.

I've even been able to get this to work on steel cases, to include resizing.

I've seen other solutions to include using a pin where you have to feel the Berdan hole but never seen this for sale.

Interesting.

Why can't you put the new primer in using the same tool (press, hand primer, etc.) that you would use for a boxer primer?

The Berdan primers are too big to fit in any existing tool I know of.

I had a coffee can full of brass so I went down to the sink before anyone was using it and went thru the motion. First pass, I had less than half succeed, but that's ok. I'm getting the easy stuff done first (at least for now) and will proceed with resizing everything. The Berdan cases that succeeded will get resized (since I have not resized anything now) and primed, and the ones that didn't succeed will have the deprime tried again. But I need to resize since I need a tight space along the mouth for the hydraulic method to work.

Some brass did not succeed since the mouth was too big. Just have to resize.

There were two rod supplieds, one has a larger diameter than the other. To cut to the chase, I just used the larger rod.

The black piece is the holder, where you place the die with the case in.

Ah, I gotcha.

I admire the experiment . . . and I hope to hell that I never need to do it.

For .223, there is ample Boxer available, even though I do find some brass Berdan.

However for .308 there is an excess of brass Berdan, and that is the weak spot for .308 reloading. Less of a problem nowadays, since surplus Port, S. African and others have dried up but I bet there is still a lot out there.

I have an old single hand primer. I imagine it could easily be modified for the larger diameter primers. I have always looked for some berdan primers just in case this became a necessity due to an odd caliber like my Dutch Hembrug in 6.5x53R. Never found any. Have you tried other ways to decap that don’t include taking a shower?

I think there are four ways:
1. rip it out, e.g. RCBS Berdan decapper
2. (water) hydraulic, when you can find it. It is not that big of deal when you get used to it.
3. push pin like a Boxer decapper. Seen products online, never for sale
4. I've seen an (air) pneumatic online, seems the way to go if you have the equipment on hand. Similar to hydraulic.