Live Primers in brass assortment!

[efelien]

I bought a bag of 200 357 mag brass at a local gun show. When I started to re-size them, I noticed that one had a live primer. That really got my attention, and I found that 62 of the 200 had live primers. The brass has NOT been re-sized, and I suppose that whoever dumped them must have decapped and re-primed and then realized that he/she hadn't run them through the sizing die.

Now what do I do? I assume I can take the decapping pin out of my Lyman TC die and size them, but I don't know if the primers are sp or spm. I hate to "pop" them all off if I don't have to.

 

[rcmodel]

I'd just size & expand/deprime them all.
Just go easy and throw the old primers away.

They won't go off during depriming if you don't slam the press handle down, and probably not even then.

Throw a folded up rag over the slot in the ram to catch one if it somehow did decide to go off. The "pop" will be safely contained in the die, but the spent primer will make a quick exit through the ram slot.

Or load & shoot them as long as you are aware which ones they are and know you may experiance mis-fires.

rc

 

[gilly6993]

just go about it like they were spent primers....remove, size, and reprime....

 

[jcwit]

Load em up and use them for practice. I'll bet the paper will never know the difference.

 

[bullseye308]

If you plan to save your primers to recycle I would not throw live primers in with the spent ones. You will not be liked at the scrap yard. I save all my spent primers to recycle as they are brass. So far I have a gallon pickle jar almost full.

 

[alfack]

Take the primer punch pin out of your resizing die and resize them.

 

[bullseye308]

^ is good advice. Use them for practice rounds or "fouling shots" No point wasting good primers. Just keep them seperate and marked from the others just in case. I bought a box of 38 brass last year and it had a couple hundred primed cases in it. I moved the primers to some 357 cases and had 7 hangfires and 1 not go off at all. They were all light loads for plinking so I wasn't worried, and they were free.

 

[A and O]

I would go back and see if the guy had any more. Sounds like you got a decent deal.

 

[Gold]

Remove primer punch out of your resizing die

 

[efelien]

Thank you. I pulled the decapping pin and resized them all. Then I loaded 12 with 6.4 grains of Unique behind a 148 grain Speer HBWC. All fired perfectly and seemed to be very accurate. I hit my 8" reactive target every time from ~ 50 feet, and the slugs made a substantial dent in the 1/2 " steel circle.

 

[RidgwayCO]

I normally hand-prime my brass before running it through the Lee Classic Turret (with the decapping pin removed from sizing die). I've never had a problem over thousands of rounds.

 

[billybob44]

Take the primer punch pin out of your resizing die and resize them.

^^^What he says+load them with light target loads. Bill..
Just noticed that you already did this?? Oh well I'm always a day late+dollar short....