Yesterday I was poking around the loading bench, and decided to run off some .223 blasting ammunition. Nothing special, just a milder load of ball powder under 52 grain hollow points. I try to keep a few thousand rounds of .223 around for the occasional range day where I practice rifle techniques.
Digging into my bucket 'o .223 brass, I saw I had a bunch of range picks in there, many with crimped primer pockets.
Uh oh.....
Normally not a problem for me, but some dummy (me) bent an anvil rod in my RCBS primer pocket swager.... the small rod..... So no pocket swaging for me.
Now, reloaders are inventive if nothing else. Casting around, I found an alternative method of dealing with the issue. Not perfect, but it worked out Ok for what I was working with. I prefer to iron the brass crim
ped over the military primer back into the case, but an alternative presented itself.The simple case deburring tool did a fine job of removing most of the crimp with only a few twists. Time per case is less than half what it takes to use the swager, but the downside is brass is removed. Done gently, the deburring tool cuts off the crimp, and leaves a slight bevel to aid in seating primers.
Care must be taken not to remove too much metal. Just enough to allow good primer seating, and no more.
Range picked brass with crimped military primer pockets need not be passed up. It just takes one more easy step to reload. Go for it!
2 comments:
I made the discovery some time ago that my Wilson deburring tool would fit in my drill press chuck. Gently used, with the spindle on the slowest speed, it speeds the case prep process substantially. Turned out to be slightly better than the Dillon primer pocket swaging tool.
Same trick also works for chamfering the case mouth (both inside and outside) after trimming to length.
Pay close attention to what you're doing, though, especially when chamfering the outside of the case mouth - I'd bet a 1/2 hp drill press motor won't slow down much if you stuff your hand in the moving parts.
I always liked the Lyman decrimping tool. It bottoms out in the primer pocket, and cuts a very consistant chamfer, plus burnishing the bottom of the pocket to boot.
Anything more than a few dozen would get old and I'd end up taking them to work and sticking them on the Dillon, but for a quick and dirty, they rock.
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