Im looking to buy a Dillon 650. If this press decaps and primes the brass. How and when do the primmer pockets get cleaned? Can I use the 650 to decap my brass like a single stage press before tumbleing?
Assuming you are talking about pistol ammo, don’t worry about it. Except when I was shooting silhouette, I’ve never cleaned pistol primer pockets in the decades I’ve been reloading.
thank you for the responce. I will be loading .45acp and .223
Every couple of reloading I run the brass though the press without loading them. Just decapping and resizing. I then tumble them, check them for size and trimming.
The 650 will decap and prime.
From what I’ve seen the primer pockets don’t really get cleaned unless you use a uniformer or use stainless media in a tumbler such as Thumlers Tumbler. Ultrasonic would probably clean them but I have no experience with that.
Regardless – I haven’t seen any reason/value to cleaning or uninforming the pockets other than long range precision loads.
For pistol I just tumble the brass and run it through – size/decap, prime, and load all in a single run.
For rifle I tumble and lube. Then I run it through the press to size/decap and trim (requires press mounted trimmer). Next I tumble to clean off the lube and run it through the press to load. I keep a sizing die with pin in for this to make sure any tumbling media in the flash hole gets punched out. Priming is done during the loading stage. It helps to have separate tool heads for prep and loading.
Check out brianenos.com for some good detail on Dillon stuff.
Thank you for your responces
I only clean primer pockets when making precision bolt gun loads, and even then, I have to wonder if it makes a difference.
I’ve never cleaned a primer pocked in 15 years of reloading.
Some benchrest guy over on accurate shooter did a pretty thorough test with like 40 rounds of cleaned and dirty pockets. No difference was found.
As mentioned, getting the lube off would be more important. I don’t even decap or resize on my Progressive anymore. Gets the machine too dirty. I use a single stage for all the dirty jobs.
I wish I’d never read about primer pocket cleaning!
Yup, same here. Single stages presses are cheap enough. I think batch processing (e.g., doing one process like resizing on a bunch of brass) is more efficient use of time anyways.
Rifle Only:
If you only have the one loader, you will need a couple of tool heads for .223. Since you have to lube bottle neck cases you could size/decap and trim using one tool head (all at the same time). Then you need to tumble again to remove the lube. Removing the primer pocket crimp is done at this point as well if using brass that has been crimped.
While I agree it does get the press pretty damn dirty, I just can’t warm up to the thought of sizing 1000 cases on the single stage. I just dump them in the case feeder, and an RCBS lube die and FL sizing die takes care of business.
Ditto. I hate case prep. Being able to size, swage, and trim all in one step makes it a breeze.
If I get carried away with the lube it can gunk up the case feeder and/or tube. Otherwise cleanup is pretty quick and is (to me) well worth it.
That’s cool. Yeah… I almost never have that many to do. I stay on top of brass prep so I’m only running what we shot plus any we found.
The worst is when we find like 200-300 pieces of XM193… Lord that’s a long day of case trimming, crimp removal, and everything else.
I feel your pain there. I’m currently shooting my way through 3 cases of XM193. So far not one damn piece hasn’t needed trimming…ugh.
Swaging primer pockets? If so, how are you doing this on a 650 at the same time as sizing and trimming?
Sorry, I should have specified that this was on a 1050.
I figured that was it, but I was really hoping someone had a mod that would do it on a 650. Darn!
I load in a 1050 and sweged a lot of brass there. I now prefer the RCBS cutter mounted in a variable speed drill with trigger lock. A drill press set to horizontal would be even better. Less chance of overdoing it with the cutter.
I’ve never tried a 1050, but I too like to take operations like that and priming off the progressive.
Too much going on on a machine can allow mistakes to be made. I like loading fully primed and prepped brass on my progressive… even with pistol ammo.