Sometimes I wonder if Lake City brass is worth it ...

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TwoEyedJack

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I started loading a bunch of .223 for the upcoming ground squirrel shoot. Had a big bucket of what I thought was fully processed LC brass, a few pounds of H335, a 500 round box of Midway Dogtown 50 gr. hollow points, and my trusty Dillon 550.

After the first few rounds, I feel something kind of "off" in the decapping, and the primer won't seat. What the heck? I wrest the case out of the shell plate and the primer is smashed. Dang. Another few rounds and it does it again, but this time I don't push the handle down hard enough to get it seated. I pull the casing out, and sure enough, there is a ridge around the primer pocket.

Somehow, a bunch of unprocessed casings got mixed in. Normally, this would not be a huge problem. The military primers are always brass, and I normally use CCI primers which are silver. But in the crunch, not being able to find CCI, I loaded a few thousand rounds with Remington primers, which are brass colored. So I can't tell the processed from the un-processed.

I ended up putting the sizing die in the rock chucker, then running the casing through my dillon swager, then into the dillon for priming, charging, and seating. Something that should have taken an hour took two.

At least I am getting good accuracy ;)
 
I think you are having crimp issues. LC brass is crimped around the primer hole and the crimp stays until it is either swaged away, or cut away. I bought a Dillon Super Swage https://www.dillonprecision.com/content/p/9/pid/25263/catid/8/Super_Swage_600 and swage out any crimped primer pockets. This tool is very quick and justifies its cost if you have coffee cans of 223 brass.

Before I used the Super Swager I used the spay blade on a Stockman knife and cut out the primer pocket crimp. Took forever but it was economical.

I think LC brass is great stuff, once I remove the crimp.
 
I ran into that once upon a time, as well. A pile of semi-processed brass, some crimped, some not. Ugh.
So, during inspection I kept the swage in hand. Just took like 1/2 a second to see if it passed easily into the pocket. The offending brass at that point got segregated for the extra step. Totally worth it
 
If you had to cut or swage the primer pocket everytime?

Then I'd say no, but you only have to do it once.
And LC brass is pretty consistent, so ya, it's worth it.
 
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