spencerhut
Member
I was loading up some plinkers for the AR and busted the de-capping pin on my X-Die. After looking the offending case over, the flash hole was way undersized. This was some military surplus ball ammo I got from Ammoman. The rounds are marked IK on the head. While some of you may toss these, I'm a frugal guy. I've never been into minute of a gnats ass type accuracy so I'm not a flash hole deburring kind of guy. But I did head over to MidwayUSA and get a Lyman Flash Hole Uniformer Tool for $10
http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpage.exe/showproduct?saleitemid=729748
The really cool part about this Lyman tool is you can remove the handle and mount it in your RCBS Power Station or even a regular old drill for that matter. So 3/4 hour later I had all the offending flash holes in ~500rds all fixed up. This batch of brass was a mixed bunch and while cleaning the flash holes I observed the following.
FC, R-P, UMC, PMC, LC, WCC, FNM - All had minimal material removed from the flash hole and could be used as is with zero problems.
Black Hills Gold Match .223 - Some cases were already perfect, some had huge chunks falling out. The most inconsistent of all I uniformed. Still perfectly usable. Never would have known if I wasn't playing with the new toy.
NPA - Very undersized flash holes. High pressure required to ream out the holes. Unreamed holes causing decapping pin to meet heavy resistance on my X-Die when loading. Lee Decapping die is smaller and slipped right through with little to no trouble.
IK - The smallest flash hole of all. Very high (fatiguing) pressure required to ream out the flash holes. Unreamed holes break decapping pins on RCBS X-Die when loading. Lee Decapping die could be whacked through the very small flash hole with a hammer. Ruins case though. Why would you ever do this? I only did it once thinking the crimp was really tight on the primer.
http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpage.exe/showproduct?saleitemid=729748
The really cool part about this Lyman tool is you can remove the handle and mount it in your RCBS Power Station or even a regular old drill for that matter. So 3/4 hour later I had all the offending flash holes in ~500rds all fixed up. This batch of brass was a mixed bunch and while cleaning the flash holes I observed the following.
FC, R-P, UMC, PMC, LC, WCC, FNM - All had minimal material removed from the flash hole and could be used as is with zero problems.
Black Hills Gold Match .223 - Some cases were already perfect, some had huge chunks falling out. The most inconsistent of all I uniformed. Still perfectly usable. Never would have known if I wasn't playing with the new toy.
NPA - Very undersized flash holes. High pressure required to ream out the holes. Unreamed holes causing decapping pin to meet heavy resistance on my X-Die when loading. Lee Decapping die is smaller and slipped right through with little to no trouble.
IK - The smallest flash hole of all. Very high (fatiguing) pressure required to ream out the flash holes. Unreamed holes break decapping pins on RCBS X-Die when loading. Lee Decapping die could be whacked through the very small flash hole with a hammer. Ruins case though. Why would you ever do this? I only did it once thinking the crimp was really tight on the primer.
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