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Sooo...one night late at the reloading bench

IWAC

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Sep 11, 2013
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The Great American Desert
I was depriming and sizing some range pick-up brass. All of a sudden, the effort increased. "Hmmmmm, sez I".:oops: I remember thinking "That must be a G.I. case, with a crimped-in primer!" The decapping pin went through, and I thought "WHAT in the world???":cuss: or words to that effect. I got the case off the pin, and found what looked like this...maybe a .22 caliber case had fallen inside the 357 case, causing the problem. I now CHECK at least twice before attempting to deprime Any case. I may learn slow, but I learn good!
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I tried to deprime a steel cased 9mm once. It cost me a set of Squirrel Daddy high strength universal decapping pins. The thing folded my standard decapping pin over like a paper plane.
 
I broke a brand, new Redding universal de-priming die on a Berdan primed 9mm. First day I used the die. The whole stem was a one piece decapping stem/pin.
I've had 22 cases in my 9mm before, It's a *** moment for sure, but I can't say I punched a hole in one.

What Brand of die was it? It must be tougher than mine.
 
I've had the 22 case in cases I was depriming. I did bust or bent a squirrel daddy pin. After that if they are hard to push the primer out I squeeze the case mouth with a pair of small Chanel locks and toss it into the scrap bucket.
I've had a couple nickel plated berdan primed 223 cases over the years along with quite a few berdan primed 308 cases..
Then I had a bunch of small holed primer flash holes. All that stuff will be going to the recycle yard.
 
I use every case I can. I have a box for brass shavings from trimming and cases that split or were otherwise unusable. It's about half the size of a shoe box and isn't even full yet after 3 solid years of reloading. I must not be doing it right.
 
I had been given some 7.62x54R brass a while back, and was decapping them with the RCBS heavy duty decapping die. Hit one that felt a little different than the others I had just done. It turns out I got lucky with that one and punched right through the bottom of a berdan case. About all it did to the die was collapse the spring above the pin, and one email to RCBS turned into 4 replacement springs being sent to me.
 
I recently punched a hole in a 22 case that was in a 9mm case. I use a standard Lee Universal Depriming Die. I didn't notice it until I started on the next case as the 22 case stuck on the depriming pin.
 
When I first started buying and selling range brass I'd remove the primers before tumbling. I ruined a fairly new Hornady single-stage Lock n Load press. All the carbon and other crap wore out the aluminum around the ram and I got a lot of movement on the ram.
Ever since then everything gets wet tumbled before it goes on the press m
Hornady did replace the press.
Plus tumbling first makes it easier to look into the for berdan primers.
I don't force anything any more, if it has alot of resistance I see why and more then likely I'll squeeze the case mouth and toss the case in the scrap buck.
 
One day I was running an angle grinder on my work bench in close-ish proximity to my turret press. The sparks were raining down pretty good on the bucket that catches the spent primers. This would normally be a non-issue; however, I had recently received some brass from a GB purchase that was already primed. To be safe, I had removed the unknown condition primers and re-primed with my own. So now I had a bucket full of spent and live primers... Well let's just say that got my attention! I had to stop what I was doing for a couple of mins to figure out what was going on. Nothing damaged, nobody hurt; lesson learned.
 
<I thought you were going to launch into a reloader's version of Monster Mash.">

Been there. Done that. Also have caught 9mm case in a .44mag case. Have plenty of replacement pins on hand.
 
When I broke my last pin and no backup, I got by using a picture hanging nail. Naturally I had a collet type decaping stem so I could easly replace the "pin."
 
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