I was watching a Youtube video last night about the 7.62x39 caliber in the ar-15 platform. I came across a video where the guy was pulling bullets from factory ammo (Wolf, I believe)and was re-seating Hornady bullets on top at a slightly different COL. The bullet weight pulled and replaced was 123 grain. He was reporting sub-MOA accuracy with the modified round. The guy called the process Mexican matching but I can't find any more information on that process. The motivation for this guy was taking factory rounds that were costing him 20 cents/loaded round and adding the Hornady bullet (around 30 cents each) for an economical product. Have any of you heard of this technique and maybe have a different name for it? Here is the link to that video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCeP_uP7VuE

Surely it doesn't cost $0.50 per round to load your own 7.62X39 if you have brass?

If you had the brass you could load those Hornadys for around 40 cents I guess. 3.5 cents for primer, 30 cents for 123gr Hornady bullet, and 7-9 cents for powder. The thing that appeals to me about this "Mexican matching" process is that I won't have to retrieve brass when I'm shooting.

I have done the same with cheap factory .223 rounds (pulling the 55gr fmj bullet and replacing with hornady 55gr Zmax poly-carb tipped).
Mainly because range won't allow FMJ.
Factory non-fmj is relatively expensive; I had tons of cheap fmj ammo, time, and had bought tons of vmax cheap (500ct Z-MAX)
Worked pretty good. Accuracy definitely turned out better than the fmj.

oldoak2000- I hadn't thought about converting a couple hundred rounds of FMJ to SP or HP so I can shoot it at the local range. Great idea-

Yup - a Hornady Cam bullet-puller die made it quick and easy;
I had just started re-loading .223 and hadn't built-up a bunch of brass, etc.
I'm keeping the fmj to someday re-load and shoot on my own place.
I actually weighed powder charges on a dozen cartridges or so - surprised they were pretty darn accurate & consistent, and this was on cheap brass-cased .223 (PPU, independance, etc).

For $0.10 more per round you can buy the 7.62x39 Hornady with the 123gr SST bullet already loaded in it from the factory....

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/116209/...=ProductFinding

Yep, it's called Mexican match ammo. Can be done with any caliber. Just make sure that you use the same weight bullet. Some brass cased ammo may need to be very slightly neck sized to give proper neck tension, but this process has been around for a loooong time.

Pulling bullets is a pain.