Brave New World - Priming Crimped Brass

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d31tc

d31tc

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So, I am learning all sorts of new things. Recently learned about kinetic bullet pullers. No I'm learning about hands on, vs book learning, with crimped primers.

Now I'm getting hands on with crimped primers. Obviously I've read all about them and had gone through the process of using a Lyman primer pocket reamer and got onto priming. First 2 went in nice. Third one, not so nice. Primer wouldn't go in with me being nice to it. So, being brave, I removed all of the other primers from the hand priming tool, put on my thick work gloves, hearing protection, and I already had on safety glasses. Then I stepped outside and squeezed that puppy home, hard. This, I think, was brave, considering a loud noise at 1:00 am with the wife and kids asleep would not have been good, let alone a sore hand and a trip to the ER. I feared the wife and kids issue more. Again, I'm very brave.o_O

So, did I do right or did I do stupid? How loud is a primer that goes off in the priming tool? How much damage can a single primer, case pointed in a safe direction while wearing thick leather gloves, hearing protection and safety glasses cause? Was there a better way to handle this? The only other option that I saw to get the case free of the shell holder was to poke the primer from the other direction. Either way, I'm poking at a primer and thought doing it outside was a better choice.

I thought I reamed the primer pockets well enough. After the first one, I went through the remaining ones again with the Lyman hand tool. Had a second one that wanted to be real stubborn. Again went and reamed the remaining ones and had a third stubborn one. That's 3 out of 21 cases. I'm thinking, "I need to buy a swager." Or I'm doing something wrong (besides forcing a primer home).
 
Getting it started strait is a big part of getting it right. Run a countersink by hand and put a very small bevel or taper at the start of the pocket. This should help make sure alignment is good. If you reamed the pocket it should slide right in. I dont ream I use a rcbs military crimp.remover and each tool is slightly different.
 
With your PPE equipment you're OK. Primers are loud! Not as loud as a 357 snubbie, but in a room with no ear protection your ears wil ring for quite a while. Hot gasses and debris can injure/cut fingers, BTDT (primers used to use ground glass to aid deeper ignition, and foil and burned compound can be "fired" out of the case mouth). Eye, ear, finger protection is the way to handle any primer removal or work other than seating. Keep the case mouth pointed in a safe direction. I have been reloading for quite a whie and I occasionally need to poke out an unfired primer and I have my glasses on and be gentle and I've never had one pop (But I had a Lee Loader in 44 Mag. that would pop one out of 20-25. Had to change skivvies a few times...)...

When I first came across crimped primers, being a machinist/mechanic for 30+ years prior, I immediately thought of a countersink. Since then I have removed primer crimps with a standard 1/2"x60 degree countersink on a 1/4" hex shaft on thousands of cases (9mm, 45 ACP, 30-06, 7.62x51, 7.62x54, and 303 British). Never a problem, just chuck the counter sink in a drill, touch a case primer pocket against the spinning tool for 1 second and it's done...
 
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d31tc said:
So, I am learning all sorts of new things. Recently learned about kinetic bullet pullers. No I'm learning about hands on, vs book learning, with crimped primers.

Now I'm getting hands on with crimped primers. Obviously I've read all about them and had gone through the process of using a Lyman primer pocket reamer and got onto priming. First 2 went in nice. Third one, not so nice. Primer wouldn't go in with me being nice to it. So, being brave, I removed all of the other primers from the hand priming tool, put on my thick work gloves, hearing protection, and I already had on safety glasses. Then I stepped outside and squeezed that puppy home, hard. This, I think, was brave, considering a loud noise at 1:00 am with the wife and kids asleep would not have been good, let alone a sore hand and a trip to the ER. I feared the wife and kids issue more. Again, I'm very brave.o_O

So, did I do right or did I do stupid? How loud is a primer that goes off in the priming tool? How much damage can a single primer, case pointed in a safe direction while wearing thick leather gloves, hearing protection and safety glasses cause? Was there a better way to handle this? The only other option that I saw to get the case free of the shell holder was to poke the primer from the other direction. Either way, I'm poking at a primer and thought doing it outside was a better choice.

I thought I reamed the primer pockets well enough. After the first one, I went through the remaining ones again with the Lyman hand tool. Had a second one that wanted to be real stubborn. Again went and reamed the remaining ones and had a third stubborn one. That's 3 out of 21 cases. I'm thinking, "I need to buy a swager." Or I'm doing something wrong (besides forcing a primer home).
Click to expand...

If wearing gloves and glasses, youll be fine if one lights off.

The Lyman tool works well enough, as its pretty much a copy of the Hornady version. I chuck mine in a cordless drill to cut crimps. Its fast and and easy and only has to be done once. I prefer the RCBS cutter overall though as its impossible to over cut them.
 
Keep in mind that if you ream, the reamer shouldn't just cut a square edge around the primer pocket. Good swagers and reamers round the edge so a new primer doesn't catch an edge going in. That can cause anything from a bang to a mangled primer....

Even good swager buttons cause problems if they aren't pressed in enough to round the edge a little. The rounder the edge, the easier they are to prime. Beveled edges are usable, but even beveled edges can leave spurs that can catch a primer cup edge.
 
Primers do have some destructive force on their own. My direct experience is with .209 shotgun primers. I think you were fine with your PPE.

When I was young and dumb, I set one off with a hammer once. Ended up with a nice, daisy shaped inside-out primer embedded about 1/4" deep in the side of my finger. My fear of pain was less than my fear of parental retribution, so a pliers and a buddy (the one who came up with the idea) were enlisted to remove. I still have the scar.

My evil genius uncle used to have a lot of time on his hands when it wasn't corn season, and he also had access to a pretty good machine shop. He fabricated a breech block with integral stock roughly replicating a cheap .410 break action shotgun from aluminum, and fitted a short aluminum barrel that sleeved an old .177 caliber air pistol barrel taken from a Crossman pistol that no longer held air. The chamber held a .209 shotgun primer, and airgun pellets were single loaded from the breech. We found that with the application of a drop of fingernail polish and placing a pellet directly on top, we created a "pellet cartridge." Trigger pull and sights left a lot to be desired, and the breech leaked a little (he had an engineering solution for that , but never got around to implementing as he moved on to a bigger project of building an oxy/acetylene powered .38 cal rifle after procuring a free .357 bore barrel from a fire damaged rifle) but it was effective on barn sparrows and starlings to 15 yards or so. In hindsight, he'd probably created an illegal short barreled rifle, but nobody cared about such things in those days. Never heard about the acetylene rifle, so I'm assuming that project was a failure.
 
I tried a few different things when I started dealing with crimped primer pockets... I bought a reamer, and did NOT have good luck with it. As GW mentioned above, it left a sharp edge and the primers would catch on it. If I tried to run the reamer up far enough to hit the bevel in the swager, I would usually bend the rim of the cartridge... it just wasn't working. Given that I had about 8000 cases to swage, I needed a solution that would work, without guess work, without having to go back again and re-re-re do them. I bought the Lyman Case Prep Center. In one setting, I can cut the crimp, uniform the pocket, and knock the edge off the rim... it's perfect. Further, it also includes inside and outside case debur tools... so after I trim cases, I can just bushwhack the rims... without getting rigor mortis hands.
 
The general rule is if you are having to force something, then something is wrong.You need to stop and find the problem.

I have not found any one single tool that removes the primer crimp on 100% of cases. My favorite is the reamer that Wilson sells for use with their trimmer. It seems to be made from better steel that the others. My next favorite is a 45º countersink used in a drill.

Good on you for using your PPE!
 
lightman said:
The general rule is if you are having to force something, then something is wrong.You need to stop and find the problem.

I have not found any one single tool that removes the primer crimp on 100% of cases. My favorite is the reamer that Wilson sells for use with their trimmer. It seems to be made from better steel that the others. My next favorite is a 45º countersink used in a drill.

Good on you for using your PPE!
Click to expand...

Yeah, my rule of thumb is “If you have to force it - don’t.” My kids sometimes remember this, though, suffice it to say, I’ve broken my thumb before (first metacarpal, right hand). And I’ve seen pictures and read stories. Thus the reason for PPE. There probably would have been less force to clear the shell from the shell holder if I would have pushed the primer from the inside out with a decapper on the press, but if it did pop off, I wanted that to be outside with less disruption to everyone sleeping inside.
 
d31tc said:
There probably would have been less force to clear the shell from the shell holder if I would have pushed the primer from the inside out with a decapper on the press
Click to expand...

Punching out live primers with a decap pin is a relatively safe process... I've even decapped live primers from crimped brass without issues. Go slow and don't force it... and, of course, wear proper protection.
 
d31tc said:
So, I am learning all sorts of new things. Recently learned about kinetic bullet pullers. No I'm learning about hands on, vs book learning, with crimped primers.

Now I'm getting hands on with crimped primers. Obviously I've read all about them and had gone through the process of using a Lyman primer pocket reamer and got onto priming. First 2 went in nice. Third one, not so nice. Primer wouldn't go in with me being nice to it. So, being brave, I removed all of the other primers from the hand priming tool, put on my thick work gloves, hearing protection, and I already had on safety glasses. Then I stepped outside and squeezed that puppy home, hard. This, I think, was brave, considering a loud noise at 1:00 am with the wife and kids asleep would not have been good, let alone a sore hand and a trip to the ER. I feared the wife and kids issue more. Again, I'm very brave.o_O

So, did I do right or did I do stupid? How loud is a primer that goes off in the priming tool? How much damage can a single primer, case pointed in a safe direction while wearing thick leather gloves, hearing protection and safety glasses cause? Was there a better way to handle this? The only other option that I saw to get the case free of the shell holder was to poke the primer from the other direction. Either way, I'm poking at a primer and thought doing it outside was a better choice.

I thought I reamed the primer pockets well enough. After the first one, I went through the remaining ones again with the Lyman hand tool. Had a second one that wanted to be real stubborn. Again went and reamed the remaining ones and had a third stubborn one. That's 3 out of 21 cases. I'm thinking, "I need to buy a swager." Or I'm doing something wrong (besides forcing a primer home).
Click to expand...

The L.E. Wilson chamfering/deburring tool is better than the Lyman if you want to stick to hand tools. RCBS markets them under their name also. I have two, one with RCBS stamped on it, one without. But, follow Charlie98's advice below, and you'll be fine.

Charlie98 said:
Punching out live primers with a decap pin is a relatively safe process... I've even decapped live primers from crimped brass without issues. Go slow and don't force it... and, of course, wear proper protection.
Click to expand...

I've never had one go off either, but I still wear earmuffs when I do them.

Oh, and don't forget the Soma! (Huxley reference) ;)
 
entropy said:
I've never had one go off either, but I still wear earmuffs when I do them.
Click to expand...

I had a few .357 cases with primers in them... I didn't know what primers they were, so I wanted to get rid of them. At that time, I was scared to punch out live primers, so I went out in the garage to just cap them off in the 686. Holy Toldeo! Those things were LOUD! After that, 1) I had developed a more healthy respect for the power of a primer, 2) I decided I needed to find a better method of rendering primed brass, and 3) ear and eye protection was the rule of the day when doing something like that.
 
I used primed .38's in my Trooper in high school to illustrate why it's not a good idea to try to disarm someone when you think you are a Tae-Know Do know-it-all. A classmate asked me to be his 'attacker' for his TKD demo for a class. I brought my .357 (to the principal's office, where it was kept before and after the demo, for the day) with 6 primed .38 cases, and stood about 3 feet away from him in the classic 'stick 'em up' pose. He started a roundhouse kick, I stepped my right foot back, pulled the gun back, and his foot hadn't even connected with my back when that primer went off! (Yes, it was very LOUD!) I turned to the class and said, "That's why you don't want to try to disarm someone unless you've been properly trained for it." Which I had; my Dad, who was a cop, and I worked on handgun retention together often.
That kid hated me the rest of the year. (I was a senior, he a junior. Didn't see him much after I graduated, but on the choir trip to Anaheim, he tried to take on three drunk Marines on leave. His girlfriend and her best friend, both black belts themselves, talked him out of it. He never learned that the whole idea of martial arts is to avoid confrontation...)
 
This should not be difficult - the right tool for the right job will pay dividends. As someone said above, the Wilson reamer bit is good, as is Hornady, RCBS, etc. They will all ream the pocket fine, and when fully inserted into the primer pocket they will leave a nice rounded edge that won't catch on the new primer. I gave up on slow swagers many years ago and have used a motorized reamer. If you're needing to worry about a primer going off, you're not finishing the reaming completely or perhaps not using a purpose-designed primer pocket reamer bit. In over 50 years of reloading I have NEVER had a primer detonate in any fashion. Take your time and be patient.
 
Rather than post it again here as wasted band width, please check out my last post in the "Lee Ram Prime" thread below: Pictures....;)
 
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90% of what I run is NATO brass. I swage, countersink, then depth uniform. Some brass, that crimp is pretty deep and it takes a bit to get the corner off.

It can be at times tedious, but visual inspection during each step with magnifying eyewear ensures I don't have "issues" later.
 
Hornady hand reamers get it done for me. After enough primers started sideways from range brass (IMI 45acp) I began reaming the pocket of Any range brass that comes home outside my brass catcher. This way, even if there wasn't a crimp, the feel on the press is uniform.

I only do this with gloves on.
 
I think, looking at the brass, the reamer didn't ream the edge of the crimp enough. The reamer was rotating smoothly and didn't appear to be taking any more material off the edge, so I thought it was good to go; then it wasn't. Maybe it's possible the primer pocket on these cases was shallow, causing the reamer to bottom out without the edge chamfer being able to do it's job? Maybe, chucking it in a drill would be better to allow a little more force to ensure a chamfer that is deep enough? I had reamed out a bunch of 5.56 range brass using the reamer chucked in a drill and I was thinking it was maybe removing too much. I haven't primed any of those cases yet, so we'll see. I only had 21 cases of once fired 300 Blackout, so I just decided to ream them by hand. Maybe I chose poorly, or those p

It looks like the RCBS, where it indexes off the base of the case vs the bottom of the primer pocket, would be more consistent in removing the crimp?
 
Back in the day (90's) I bought 8000 lake city 5.56 cases and 4000 Lake City 7.62 cases. I paid an extra few bucks to have them deprimed, cleaned and swaged. I still use those cases and to this day I haven't had an issue with any of them taking a primer. 30+ years of reloading and I have never had to swage or otherwise enlarge a primer pocket. I guess I have been lucky.

What brass are you using that has crimped primer pockets? Did you purchase a bunch of it? It might be worth buying a swager. I think Dillon makes a nice one that gets pretty good review and doesn't (didn't at one time at least) cost a fortune.

I don't think you were in much danger forcing the primer in with the precautions you took (other than possible ear plugs for the wife and kids while sleeping) but that would get real old for me real quick if I had a bunch of brass like that.
 
It was Federal AE 300 Blackout 150Gr, once fired by me. This was the first time I've tried to prime brass that I "decrimped", so, with no prior experience. I'm going to shoot a few more of those rounds and try the Lyman reamer chucked in my drill. I had about 200 pieces of 5.56 that I reamed with the reamer bit and drill method but haven't primed yet. I'll try priming some of those to see if the drill makes/made a difference with a little more leverage to get more of chamfer.

My head scratcher :thumbdown: (I now know this is a thumbs down emoji, not a head scratching emoji) is when doing it purely by hand, the reamer seemed to be rotating freely and was done cutting. I felt like I was pushing the brass and twisting moderately strong. If I was failing to push hard enough, or ream long enough, I definitely won't use a my hand reamer again, because that is untenable if I had more brass to deal with.
 
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