Thanks for all the wonderful info guys,
But I’m still trying to figure out HOW I will know when I’ve got military brass that needs de-crimping??? Many times I obtain brass from other guys, who offer me brass that has only been fired once, or whatnot, and I don’t have any idea what a “crimped” primer pocket looks like.
Can anyone tell me HOW I will know?
Also, IF I was to attempt to deprime and RE-prime a military brass casing WITHOUT first “de-crimping” it, WHAT would be the result? I mean, would it be OBVIOUS that something is wrong, OR would the primer not even fit or what???
I want to make SURE I don’t accidentaly do something wrong here.
“You’ll know when” just doesn’t comfort me very well… LOL.
You should be able to see a ring around the primer pocket. If you try to seat a primer in a case that was crimped but hasn’t been reamed/swaged, the primer will seat with some difficulty. It may fire OK but I’ve got to believe that you might be damaging the priming compound by trying to seat that primer. Once the pocket is swaged or reamed, it will seat with slight friction, but much easier.
Another way to tell, if you have the spent cases and you need to deprime them, a crimped in primer will take some force to deprime. Sometimes they even sound a little ring, like a tuning fork.
All LC and other mil cases are crimped. Win cases aren’t. Not sure about the others since that is the bulk of my case stash.
I’ve had good luck at the range asking shooters if they don’t mind if I pick up their brass. Typically I look for folks shooting XM193 right out of the packaging or white box Win. Sometimes I might pick up some brass if it looks good, and I’ll do a quick visual on it. If the primers are crimped in, they get segregated so that I know I need to ream them. If it’s Federal brass (currently marked “F C”) I’ll segregate it and shoot it once with a reduced load. Federal brass tends to be soft and their primer pockets don’t hold up as well as Win or LC.
When I get around to priming my cases, if the primer starts with great difficulty I try to stop and ream the pocket.
HOW I will know when I’ve got military brass that needs de-crimping???
If all else fails just try priming a few. If the primers don’t seat well or seat with difficulty you probably have crimps.
Once fired military cases will have the crimp. You might be able to prime them as is but they will give you a certain amount of trouble, at least the first go-around. I use Dillon’s swager which is quick and does a nice job. Not cheap, but I have more than gotten my money’s worth out of it.
Same with the Dillon trimmer. Once adusted the thousandth case comes out exactly to the same length as the first. Mine has a lot of cases through it and I am very happy with it .
A case gauge was mentioned but bears repetition. Way back when I had a certain amount of trouble with my reloads for M1 and M1A. Once I realized that my problems were related to case length (trim and headspace) I invested in step gauges for everything. Since the trimmer holds these dimensions to its settings very well, I only check resized cases randomly. But I run each and every loaded round through as a final check. This has been true of .30-06, 7.62, and 5.56 in about six different rifles.
Can’t speak to progressive loader techniques because I am firmly married to a couple of old C presses. I prefer the simplicity and precision I get from them; I just do a lot of each stage at a time. I just take a little longer to get where I’m going.
I’m thinking of getting into .223 reloading. How necessary is a trimmer to start out? I don’t shoot a ton but enough that the savings by reloading makes it more attractive.
A trimmer is a must have unless you are willing to measure every case and cull the long ones from your stash.
The cheapest is the Lee. It can be had for around $10. It works fine but it’s slow. Plus, like most trimmers you’ll need to chamfer and debur once cases are trimmed.