Never in 40 years of reloading.........

[wogpotter]

Have I found a crimped primer this tough to get out!
I acquired this box of 20 rounds of reloaded milsurp .303. Its from the 50's made in New Zealand I believe.


"Belmont" was supposedly a really good pulled down reloaded tracer ammo with the powder re worked to match & a 150 Gr sp bullet designed for hunting. The odd single box of 20 came with the crate behind it & they'd been stored together since the 60's. Because of the age I fired the Belmont to get an idea of the condition of the belted ammo in the case. It worked perfectly & even grouped well, but the primers! Oi the primers.

Using a lee universal decapping die they pushed the stem up. I re-tightened the stem & tried again. They belled the primer out into a dome that refused to release the case from the shell-holder. I finally took it all apart flattened the fired primer with a large punch & tried again. The decapping pin punched through the (once again) blown out primer cup!

Unfortunately 3 cases did this & 2 were damaged trying to fix the problem. Ol' Bruce was really whaling on the primer crimping tool the day these were made! Thank God for the Dillon swaging tool.

[44 AMP]

They ARE BOXER primed, aren't they?

For decaping military brass I use the Lee punch and base set, exclusively. Sure, its slow, but very positive. You get to feel the pin enter the flashhole, so you know everthing is lined up. A few taps with a hammer, and you're decapped.

I have had some primers the did "bulge" the cup but they ALL came out ok.

Personally, I just always assume that any non US made ammo is Berdan primed, until I check it. Once I know, then its either scrap (Berdan) or reloadable (boxer).

[wogpotter]

This was way, way beyond "bulge" all the way into "drawn" territory!!

Yep. All the Dominion Arsenal (Canadian made, New Zealand re-manufactured) was boxer, non cordite. I actually did check before this it had one big flash hole but whatta crimp Oi Vey!

[chiefr]

If you have access to a TIG, MIG or something that can weld a small ball bead of very close to the same diameter as your flash hole to your primer punch pin, you can usually punch the most difficult of primers out.

I had a mess of 7.62 NATO lot LC 67 that practically every deprime resulted in a hole punched thru the primer. I had plenty of this brass and could not stand the thought of trashing it.

Thus I came up with an idea to weld bead on the decapping pin and went to work with a file. I ended up with basically an oversize decapping pin.
Had to file a little to get desired diameter but it worked dam good. I was able to save and process 1000 cases that would have been tossed

I was using a lee universal decapper

[noylj]

Is the value of the brass worth the time and hassle?

[Mike Irwin]

"I actually did check before this it had one big flash hole but whatta crimp Oi Vey!"

The Bren gun apparently had a hasty habit of popping primers that weren't FIRMLY crimped into place. I encountered the same thing with some 1950s surplus I came across some years ago. Stuff had a crimp that looked like it had been put in with LOTS of gusto.

[wogpotter]

Is the value of the brass worth the time and hassle?

I reload so to me yes. Used .303 Brit brass is selling for $0.75 a pop.

Re the blob on the decapping pin:
How does the big end go through the flash hole?

[Unclenick]

I think he just filed it to maximum flash hole ID and to add a bit of length. Some decapping pins fail to push far enough to knock a tight primer out before the root of the pin is up against the flash hole on the inside.

In your shoes, I would assume there might be some cold welding or corrosion bonding in something that age. Try standing the fired cases on their heads and putting a drop of Kroil or other good penetrating oil on each one and letting it sit for two or three days and then see if they come out any more easily. They may swage more easily, too.

BTW, if you haven't noticed, the Dillon 600 anvil often presses flash hole burrs over the flash hole. I find it worth deburring the flash holes before swaging with it.

[chiefr]

Today 09:03 AM
wogpotter Quote:
Is the value of the brass worth the time and hassle?

I reload so to me yes. Used .303 Brit brass is selling for $0.75 a pop.

Re the blob on the decapping pin:
How does the big end go through the flash hole?

What in effect you are doing is making an oversize punch for your decapping die. There is more play between the punch pin and the primer hole than people realize.
Yes the case had to be centered relative to your punch, but it worked for me.
The file was to help make the bead fit as required.

[44 AMP]

I actually did check before this it had one big flash hole but whatta crimp Oi Vey!

Sorry, but I just had to ask.

One fellow we used to see in the local shop (he even worked there part time) was a notorious brass hound. Not a well liked fellow, either, (for other reasons..aka total poophead, but that not important).

This guy would overhear when we were going shooting at a gravel pit, then "sneak" out there after we finished to snarf on the brass. (most of us, being reloaders, didn't leave much...) This guy never shot with us, never offered to join in, and on the rare occasions he was asked to go with us, always declined,

We had shot about 500rnds of berdan primed 06 in Garand clips, and a box (20) of LC match stuff. Not wanting to bother sorting for the 20 reloadable cases, it was all left.

A couple days later, the guy comes into the shop, whining about how he had broken this third decapping pin on "match brass" and needing more pins.

Apparently, when he got there, the first couple cases he picked up were the match stuff, and he just grabbed the whole mess, and never even LOOKED at the rest of it.


Of course, we had NO idea why he was breaking so many pins....

[lee n. field]

Unfortunately 3 cases did this & 2 were damaged trying to fix the problem. Ol' Bruce was really whaling on the primer crimping tool the day these were made! Thank God for the Dillon swaging tool.

Hmm.

The old trick for Berdan primers, of filling it with water and hammering it out with something that fits tightly in the neck, maybe.

[Magnum Wheel Man]

after reading the original post, I thought same as NICK, that perhaps there was some galvanic corrosion as well as the crimp ( if you can see a huge crimp, perhaps I'm wrong ) but often there is not much indicator... I tried to pull some bullets on some handloads, I picked up at an estate auction, & dang if almost all the lead cores all separated from the jackets when trying to pull them... my reloading mentor suggested next time I run into that, try bumping the bullet in a little more to "un stick it"

so the Kroil may help... I was also going to suggest if you wet tumble, try tumbling them before decapping, & put a little extra Lemishine in the water...

[wogpotter]

It was definitely the crimp. It was a full circle & deeply indented.

[Magnum Wheel Man]

would they be easier to drill out, or clean out with a lathe ???

[Unclenick]

Even though the crimp is hard, penetrating oil and perhaps the citric acid (Lemishine is a form of citric acid) solution for corrosion in an ultrasonic cleaner could still make removal easier. If you have a primer pocket depth uniforming cutter that is centered by a shell holder, like the Neil Jones hand crank type, it might be able to cut part of the crimp off before you decap.

[wogpotter]

There was only one box of 20 of them. Once I got the originals out I ran them through the Dillon Superswage & voila, problem solved.

It was fun while it lasted though!

[iraiam]

I was sizing/de-priming military 30-06 brass, and smack; broke the pin right off, replaced it and promptly broke it again.

Later, I removed the primer the hard way, with a drill bit and wood screw. I discovered that the case had no flash hole, only a little indentation where the hole should have been, it was head stamped DEN 45.

[44 AMP]

I discovered that the case had no flash hole, only a little indentation where the hole should have been,

While I have seen factory screw-ups, including a case that didn't have a flash hole, I have to wonder a bit about how a "fired" case could be a "fired case" without a flash hole. The one case I did see without a flash hole was discovered because it didn't fire.

If the case had been fired, it should be obvious. Are you certain the "little indentation" is not the flash hole, with something (brass, or maybe broken decapping pin) jammed in it?

[wogpotter]

I'm confused as well! No flash hole = no flash & probably a blown primer.

[Unclenick]

Yes. It could never have fired powder. I had two cases like that in some Winchester bulk brass one time. Not even an attempted indent. It dawned on me at that point that commercial ammo can have failures that reloads never can, as you can't reload a load that never fired in the first place.

A fellow on another board who'd been involved in testing ammo on a government contract commented that by the time you've fired several hundred thousand rounds, you discover commercial loaders have every kind of mistake handloaders ever do, and then some, like the absent flash holes or bullet jackets without cores loaded into a round.

[iraiam]

While I have seen factory screw-ups, including a case that didn't have a flash hole, I have to wonder a bit about how a "fired" case could be a "fired case" without a flash hole. The one case I did see without a flash hole was discovered because it didn't fire.

If the case had been fired, it should be obvious. Are you certain the "little indentation" is not the flash hole, with something (brass, or maybe broken decapping pin) jammed in it?

I'm positive it did not have a hole, but I doubt it was actually "fired", for obvious reasons. This brass was a large lot that I got, it was mixed fired, unfired, blank, all old military 30-06 brass that looked like it was literally buried in mud for decades. The primer in this particular case did have a dent from a firing pin, but beyond that...? I did not keep track of what cases came from "live" rounds that I pulled apart and dumped.

Suffice to say, I have never spent so much time cleaning and prepping a lot of brass before or since this lot, I did get about 600 quality cases out of it though