How short is too short?

[cdoc42]

ghwbush, you really needn't worry if you take care. Just keep in mind it takes a sharp blow to ignite the primer. I cover the press with a large, thick bath towel so all areas are surrounded with only the press handle sticking out. Slowly raise the case into the press until you feel it stop. Then gently and slowly apply pressure until the primer pops out. Just be sure you know where it's going. Often it just drops to a spot at the base of the press. You can put an empty trash can under the press for it to fall into. There's always a first time for everything, but in 48 years I've never had one go off unexpectedly or otherwise.

[rc]

With 9mm parabellum range pick ups, as long as you do everything right I've never had to measure and trim brass to make functional ammo with mixed brass as long as I took out the crimped primers. It sounds like you don't have enough flare on your expander die and have buckled some cases. The other thing that's common is all 9mm chambers have a different amount of taper and sometimes the sizer doesn't sqeeze down the bottom of the case enough to fire reloads in a different gun with mixed range brass. The solutions is to polish the chamber in the picky gun so that all reloads will fully cycle into battery.

[Unclenick]

Originally Posted by georgewbush

i'm to nervus to decap a live cap. i will hit them with a torch to pop them but i don't want it going off in my decaping die.

NO! This is potentially very DANGEROUS! Two things wrong with it:

1.) A torch flame will anneal the case head. Case heads are the one place brass needs to be hard to prevent a blow-out at the breech under pressure. Having once had brass particles from such a blow-out driven into my face through the gaps between slide and frame, I highly recommend against the experience (thank God for safety glasses). My point: this is not merely a theoretical consideration.

2.) The standard flash hole at the bottom of the primer pocket is too small to vent the primer gasses freely. It requires a breech face to be in place to stop it from flying out backward. "It'll put your eye out." Well, it can break the skin and fly around the room, spreading lead-bearing primer residue all over, which can affect the developing brains of the grandkids. Watch how hard the primer cup hits the barrel of the little pin-fire gun used to set off the primer in a live round of 9mm starting at the 4:00 minute point in this video.

Decap in your press wearing eye and ear protection and leather gloves. Go slowly. Most likely, nothing will go off. Remember that primers are insensitive enough to be dropped by parachute into a combat zone, carried and dragged around in that same environment, travel in vehicles with stiff suspensions in a world of artillery-created potholes, and do it all without going off and injuring the persons carrying the ammo or the weapons it is in.

[georgehwbush]

just to be clear, i wasn't advising anyone to try torching anything, secondly; i do that outside in open air with the case held in place and the cap pointed away. thirdly it will not anneal at cook-off temp. and hopefully this isn't something that is done often. but hey, to each his own. i'm still not decaping a live cap in my press.

[Jim Watson]

I have carefully decapped live primers from damaged cases and even from range pickups. None have popped in the press, none have failed to go off when properly seated the second time around. I do mark them for practice only. We just have to pick our risks, but burning a primer is not mine.

[44 AMP]

i'm to nervus to decap a live cap. i will hit them with a torch to pop them but i don't want it going off in my decaping die.

If popping them off is the thing to do, why not just do it in the gun???

[Unclenick]

I had meant to suggest that as well. My concern with the flame is the brass is pulling heat from the primer, causing the torch to have to play on it longer. The temperature may not actually anneal the case, but recovery may be initiated, as it occurs at a lower temperature than recrystallization, much less grain growth. Generally, the lower the flame and the longer the exposure, the more I would expect this to be a risk, so even if one person makes it work OK, if enough others try it, sooner or later, one of them will have a problem. So, I felt it important not to leave the description with the potential hazards uncommented. It's a method outside of normal practices and not recommended in any published manual I've ever seen, so, just as we require for unpublished loads, an explicit caution seems appropriate.

If you see the lettering of the headstamp ironing out flat after a few reloadings, that tells you the head was too soft.

[Grey_Lion]

Viper is the only mention I see in this thread about specific headstamps but I didn't see an answer to this question - CDOC - did you notice whether or not the differences you found were specific to a headstamp specifically? There's a few brands I won't even trade because I've found lots of bad ones the worst of which I keep in my show & tell collection. For example - once fired cracked Blazer brass - Perfecta with their off center primer holes - Aguila that's ALL over the map with tons of variations... So I'm wondering - is it headstamp specific or something else?

[Grey_Lion]

Regarding annealing pistol brass - I make my .40 S&W JHP's starting out with junk 9mm brass cases. Step one in my JHP jacket production process is to anneal the brass to soften it with a propane torch - i.e. get it cherry red and then let it air cool. I've had a dozen or more BLAZER 9mm shells not anneal but almost entirely disintegrate in this process... The only thing I can tell you is, in my experience, Blazer brass is some crap alloy uncommon and markedly different than all of the other hundreds of shells I've handled. I can't say it's possibly a bad batch because I've got range pickup from multiple ranges & states, indoor & out and Blazer is the only one this seems to happen with. I've never had the brass assayed to chemically know the difference - this is just from personal experience across about 1500 samples over several years time.

[georgehwbush]

grey_lion; just curious; why don't you water cool the annealed brass?

[radom]

People trim self loader brass? For the life of me I end up cant find the stuff way before that is needed. I wish they did as then would get .40 go full length neck on sized to sig .357.

[mehavey]

why don't you water cool the annealed brass?

I don't think quenching would make any difference with brass (#1)

(#2) I believe GreyLion is making jackets (like RCBS started out)

[44 AMP]

Quenching metal is to increase hardness (temper) not something you want with brass cartridge cases. Fine for steel blades, sometimes done to increase lead alloy bullet hardness, not good for annealed brass.

Heating then allowing air cooling "draws the temper" from metal, which is what you want when annealing brass.

[georgehwbush]

44 AMP; i don't think quenching tempers brass.

mehavey; exactly, that's why i asked. it just makes sense to me to drop it in a water bath afterwards, so you don't have to "let it cool" was just asking.

[cdoc42]

Grey Lion, I have honestly not paid any attention to the brass brand in handloading pistol or revolver ammo. I have looked more closely at differences in rifle loads and I recently did so with my 25-06 but off the top of my head at this writing I can't provide details. I'll dig it out and report when I find it.