Reading John Paul Jones' excellent manual on progressive loading, I noticed that he recommends chamfering the primer pocket lip. What is the benefit to this, and how necessary is this step?
It's basically only necessary when primers are crimped into the pocket. That means military and surplus ammo are the only types that would need this done on a regular basis.
This makes primer seating more relaiable. Some brass, Speer in particular, is already chamfered or radiused to help with this. I need to start doing this for all my progressive brass because the only failures I get in my Lee Loadmaster are primer related.
On my military .308 brass the primer pockets were cripmed and I HAD to chamfer them for a primer to go in at all.
In my little "Blue" booklet that Sven is referring to I was talking about GI brass which I prefer over all brass if it is available in the calibers I reload and shoot.
The manual is "How To Live With And Love Your Progressive Reloader" By me and was included in all the progressive reloaders I sold in typewritten sheets in my Star and Auto Champ sales until C-H asked me for it for their factory output of Auto Champs to keep their customers from complaining about the Auto Champ when it was their customers selection of components that were causing the injuries and complaints. C-H printed a supply for me in the Blue booklet form with an Auto Champ picture on its cover but the information it contains is relevant to all progressive and other reloaders.
The Bullseye list last year caused me to reprint it a couple of times and I have some available. E-Mail me at [email protected] for more information.
John Paul Jones
Star Progressive Reloaders Discussion Group
As an alternative to using a cricket to ream the primer pocket crimp, you can use the CH press mounted primer pocket swage, or the Dillon base mounted primer pocket swage.
If you have a lot of brass to do, the Dillon is really nice.
These do not uniform the depth of the primer pockets. That is a separate reamer with a bottom cutter. - Lew
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