I am trying to reload crimped military brass and have used the RCBS decrimper on them but they still don’t seat as smoothly as non-crimped brass. They snap at the end of the pull on my hand primer.
Are they still good to go?
I have loaded a few thousand spent military rounds. A lot of them have a harder than normal seating effort but any that seated flat all fired properly. Id say 3/4 of them have had an initial ease push and then a brief stopping point and then seated.
If they bottom out in the primer pocket, they’re good to go.
AFshirt that’s exactly how it feels when I seat the primers. The only thing I’m worried about is some kind of blowback through the primer when it fires and possibly pitting the bolt face.
Mizer is the primer properly seated if the hand primer pulls all the way through and the primer is flush or just a little indented with the bottom of the case?
I’m not Mizer, but yes, if it seats so that it’s flush or (even better) a bit deeper than the bottom of the case, then it is seated correctly.
Have you tried running a uniformer or hand reamer on the brass before trying to insert the primer?
I admit that in my years of reloading I have mashed some primers into some skinny primer pockets. I’ve always just left them in out of curiosity to see if they function OK. As others have noted, if it seats just below the case head (I think the spec is something like 0.003" below case head) then it will work unless the primer pocket is too deep or loose which yours are not.
Not that you want to, but I can attest you can do some pretty gnarly seating of a primer and it will still function. They will not blow out (that is from too much pressure from the powder load or obstructions, etc) or otherwise damage your gun just from the primer seating tightly.
Of course I strive to avoid doing this as much as I can but in the course of reloading many tens of thousands of rounds, at least, and starting from ignorance I did make my share of mistakes. The only bad primer seating error I have made is not trashing a case with too loose of a primer pocket. No resistance when seating. When I shot it the primer popped out and got between the bolt or BCG (can’t remember) and receiver and really jammed up my M4 badly.
Thanks for all the advice. I feel better about using crimped brass.
bp7178, I use an RCBS decrimper, it’s better than nothing but still doesn’t get rid a of all of the crimp.
Try using your champhering tool an put a slight champher on the primer pocket! I found that helps seat the primer more easily. 
Ideally you want the primer to sit slightly below “flush”.
I use a reamer and my primers never seat flush, in fact it is a no-no I was told with floating firing pins. I always make sure because slamfires will scare the crap out of you. That and the yahoo listening in on your shooting session might call the cops and say “dat der fella has un ob dem fur otto’s, u gotta git im!”. With the current state of ignorance many idiots don’t know the difference between full-auto and semi-auto so you should be as careful as possible. Plus, loose primers inside your firearm get stuck in the worst places.
That and the yahoo listening in on your shooting session might call the cops and say “dat der fella has un ob dem fur otto’s, u gotta git im!”. With the current state of ignorance many idiots don’t know the difference between full-auto and semi-auto so you should be as careful as possible.
:rolleyes:
Even after you have reamed the military crimp, the pocket itself may not be to spec. Also, if you are having serious difficulty seating the primers after swaging, the swage is not correct. With the cutting die swager, I found the edge left afterwards was sharp and resulted in that “snap-in” during seating. As the person before said, a chamfering tool can quickly provide a radius to that edge and you shouldn’t have issues afterwards.
Another thing you may want to look into is a primer pocket uniformer from Sinclair. The depth of primer pockets on random brass is often not exact. Your seating depth will vary. I’ve had high primers on brass with swaged and nicely cleaned pockets. I don’t bother with 5.56, but on larger calibers I use a large rifle primer pocket uniformer. It results in very consistent seating depths.