556 crimp removal hornady reamer

[glaizinman]

I have a Lyman prep center and I use a hornady pocket reamer. How much do I ream out? Do I go until the reamer stops taking out brass? Somebody told me to do it that way because the reamer bottoms out then your done. Is that right? Thanks guys

 

[FROGO207]

I do not use your tool so have no answer.
I actually swage the crimp out. The reason is that the brass is put back in place rather than being removed and I feel the primer pocket will last longer before it expands too much to hold a primer. But regardless of the method you have to adjust it to work well. I will swage a small amount and then try to seat a primer. If it works I stop there if not I go a bit deeper and then try to seat a primer again. Wash rinse and repeat until you get it where you want it. The method should work the same with a reamer I would think. Did it come with any instructions? The removal or swage depth of primer pockets is usually a personal preference.

 

[hdwhit]

glaizinman wrote:
Do I go until the reamer stops taking out brass?

In short, "Yep".

The Hornady reamer is designed to pass through the crimp and then have the cutters remove just enough brass from the crimp to open up the primer pocket to civilian dimensions. I have my Hornady reamer checked into a bench-top drill press and I run it at low r.p.m. I raise the case into the reamer, slowly, holding it between my thumb and forefinger while moving my finger down my thumb to rotate the case about a half-turn. This is done to account for the possiblility I might not be 100% square with the tool. This technique works pretty well and it is fast enough that I can ream 50 cases in about ten minutes (everything I load is in lots of 50, 100 or occasionally, 200).

My only complaint with the Hornady reamer is that I don't think the one I got was properly hardened. I started out using the knurled handle Hornady sells to accompany the reamer, but after about 500 rounds, the cutting surfaces had lost their sharpness and it became a real ordeal to try and ream primer pockets by hand using it. That's when I tried chucking it in the bench-top drill press.

 

[RainDodger]

If you look at the reamer bit, it is not sharpened on the end; only along the outer edge where it cuts the crimp out. You're essentially not able to take too much brass out, as the bit won't go any deeper. It bottoms out on the bottom of the primer pocket.

 

[glaizinman]

In short, "Yep".

Thit cut really fasi Hornady reamer is designed to pass through the crimp and then have the cutters remove just enough brass from the crimp to open up the primer pocket to civilian dimensions. I have my Hornady reamer checked into a bench-top drill press and I run it at low r.p.m. I raise the case into the reamer, slowly, holding it between my thumb and forefinger while moving my finger down my thumb to rotate the case about a half-turn. This is done to account for the possiblility I might not be 100% square with the tool. This technique works pretty well and it is fast enough that I can ream 50 cases in about ten minutes (everything I load is in lots of 50, 100 or occasionally, 200).

My only complaint with the Hornady reamer is that I don't think the one I got was properly hardened. I started out using the knurled handle Hornady sells to accompany the reamer, but after about 500 rounds, the cutting surfaces had lost their sharpness and it became a real ordeal to try and ream primer pockets by hand using it. That's when I tried chucking it in the bench-top drill press.

Mine also became dull sooner than I thought it should. When new it cut really fast

 

[hdwhit]

FROGO207 wrote:
The reason is that the brass is put back in place rather than being removed and I feel the primer pocket will last longer before it expands too much to hold a primer.

Why would you think that? What is there about the displaced brass in an area of the case head around the primer pocket that does not carry any force to the chamber or the bolt face that would influcence the expansion of the primer pocket?

 

[Load Master]

I have no experience with the Hornady Primer Pocket Reamer. I have the Lyman Case Prep Multi‑Tool pictured here:


It includes what they call a primer pocket reamer. It works nice and cuts fast the crimp from 5.56 NATO cases or .223 Rem that have been crimped. You do not want to chuck the reamer and cut until it bottoms out. Doing so you will have a scrape case when you are done. When first starting out reloading .223 Rem I destroyed a couple hundred cases by over doing it with the Lyman reamer. The key is to only cut enough to remove the stakes, or crimp.

I personally have found I get the best case life and far less work by using the RCBS Primer Pocket Staking tool shown here.


This is a staked case:


This is after running it through the RCBS swagger:

This is all that is needed to allow easy primer installation.

 

[rocirish]

^^^^^I use the RCBS too. It works good once you get the hang off it. It takes a little practice to line up the case mouth in the die.

 

[FROGO207]

hdwit have you ever had a loose primer pocket? How do they get that way? If you remove more of the side of the primer pocket by reaming, it reasons that the pocket will deform and leak sooner. So I prefer to swage mine leaving all the material that was designed in the brass when manufactured to possibly increase primer pocket life. I do presently get longer life from my brass as I have fewer loose primer pockets than when I used to ream them. Most of my brass expires from neck splits rather than loose primer pockets these days. You may not gain any benefits swaging your brass and I get that. YMMV

 

[grubbylabs]

I used to use the RCBS tool, however I found that I constantly had to go back re do brass, it seems that the amount of crimp depends on where the brass is from. I found that cutting the pocket with the lyman cutting tool shown by Load Master works great. I chuck the pocket reaming bit into my cordless and cut the crimp out. It is designed to bottom out on the pocket. I am not loading match ammo, just blasting ammo for my kids, so it just has to work. And this works well for me.

 

[DeadEye9]

I also use the Lyman case prep tool for primer pockets on NATO 5.56 brass and removing the crimp. I didn't see the need for anything fancy because you only do it once for a given case and then your good. Before I purchased that I was using a standard RCBS deburring tool and never had any issues with that method either. All you are doing is removing a tiny layer of brass one time. I've seen guys do it for years with a utility knife blade and never complain, so honestly I've never felt a specialty tool was warranted.