Primer Crimp Removal Tool Harbor Freight Junk Alert

[hdwhit]

I use a 45 degree countersink in a benchtop drill press to remove primer crimps. Works great. I don't use drill bits because 1) the angle on the drill bit is shallower, and 2) drill bits are designed to advance through the material so it can easily grab the workpiece.

[F. Guffey]

To catch you up: I purchased 1,400 military cases for $14.00 dollars. No one wanted to clean the cases and then there were the 30 cal. bees/dirt daubers. Each case came with a black dirt dauber, dirt daubers are a good think. Every case came complete with a spider, most of the spiders were black widows,

I waited until the dirt daubers vacated the cases; it was like hatching in 'all together'. My wife complained about something leaving the garage that looked like a black cloud. I cleaned the inside of the cases and then soaked the cases in vinegar for 15 minutes etc..

After that but about the same time I purchased 4 belts of 30/06 cases with metal links. Again, the cases were cheap because no one wanted to clean them. I soaked the cases in vinegar for 15 minutes, rinsed in boiling water and then started tumbling. I cut tumbling time to 1 hour, that was a savings of 4 days of tumbling.

Savings/time and money: It was a trade off, I could have purchased cases or take the money I saved and purchases equipment I will use forever. That is something like 'doing it or talking about it.

And then there was that day I was minding my own business when I was looking for another deal in Yonkers, New York. I tried to talk them out of selling me 23,000 cases by the pound in barrels and boxes, all once fired, cheap. I explained to them how expensive it was to furnish bullets for all of those cases, it was about that time they made me a deal I could not refuse. They had tin/lead 50/50 bars, they had lead sheets complete with wax from below the toilet and they had rolls of lead that was removed from a X-ray room. I want for nothing.

After they cleared out the Bridgeport business I found myself digging thorough a 55 gallon barrels of chuck, again, they made me a deal; $5.00 each on 10" chucks. I purchased three, one was a W.S Heavy, one was a Buck and the other was a Cushman. I did under estimate the difficulty in cleaning chucks that were submerged in water while being stored in a 55 gallon barrel. Had anyone ever greased the chucks I would have gone back and purchased the rest of the chucks in the barrels.

F. Guffey

[Marco Califo]

Thanks Unclenick. Yes, when they did not cut brass I looked and felt the edge, and just as some HFT reviews said, it is rounded rather than sharp. It is commonly cited in the HFT reviews that the cutting edge just does not work. I read those after purchasing in the store. Chinese make what the customer wants. They can do quality. But American stores want cheap; to heck with quality. In this case, cost cutting ambushed quality and functionality.
I like HFT for things like painting supplies and the $20 cordless drill, and anything my handyman needs for my rentals. I have a digital caliper from Midway about 5 years old. I picked up a spare at HFT. Turns out they were the exact same item, buttons and colors are exactly the same, and measuring results were the same. One cost three times as much as the other.

[mikld]

Is this considered a direct link? If not, for about $10.00 you can get a high speed steel countersink that will chamfer/decrimp cases for a lifetime...
https://www.mcmaster.com/#countersinks/=19w92xt

[Marco Califo]

Home Depot and Lowes have them for $7-8. Ryobi brand worked great

[hounddawg]

apologies for the direct link, had a brain flatulation.

Did some more experimenting and found the low dollar crimp remover when mounted in a drill press seems to work pretty good. Due to the shape it bottoms out on the primer pocket keeping you from cutting away too much brass

[disseminator]

I have a Lyman Case Prep Center that came with bits to remove the crimp, but by the time I did 1000 cases I thought I was gonna need surgery to relieve the pain in my arms and hands from handling all those cases in that way.

I then bought the Dillon Super Swage and put it in a vertical mount on my load bench where I was able to process 3000 cases in the same time as the previous 1000 and without any of the pain as the previous method.

I am in my mid 40's. If you do a lot of this by hand I can see it becoming a real problem later in life. (No offense old loaders )

YMMV, but I'll stick to the Super Swage.

[F. Guffey]

Due to the shape it bottoms out on the primer pocket keeping you from cutting away too much brass

I attended a gun show, while there I visited a dealer in reloading equipment. He was selling cases that had the crimp removed with a bevel/taper cutter, I told him "those are the ugliest cases I have ever seen". I told him I have made primer crimp tools but none of the tools would save his cases because they were so ugly.

Disseminator, I have all kinds and types of tools. Some of the tools I have used are among the most dangerous tools ever made, if I could get a reloader to put a little thought into holding the case the hands would last a long time.


F. Guffey

[hounddawg]

after giving it some thought , I have to agree with F. Guffy, the best tool to use is one made for the job.

[MarkCO]

Originally Posted by higgite

Harbor Freight sells junk? Who knew?

Shocking.

[Brassguy]

Harbor Freight is the Dollar General of the tool world. But you can find some good buys there.

[Chainsaw.]

I just chuck this right in the drill, at least 4000 cases in and it still zips through crimps like nothing.

https://ads.midwayusa.com/product/25...4aAo6cEALw_wcB

[Marco Califo]

Guffey and others think the countersink removes brass that holds the primer in. I think that is an erroneous assumption. No one is saying they have actually experienced, or measured it, or had primer pockets loosen for this reason (as opposed to HOT loads).
The crimp when made, is a distortion to the case head to intentionally spread brass around the primer, thus locking it in place and making it harder to remove, and the brass harder to reprime.
The solution we are discussing, using a countersink bit to remove the distorted brass, and a tiny bit more, to ensure the new primer can pass through into the primer pocket, has never been proven, demonstrated, measured, or quantified, to reduce the primer pockets ability to hold primers in place. It did not happen, because it does not happen.
A lot of people here are theorizing about what is the "right" or "wrong" way, or tool, to do something. They are imagining evils, that have not, in my experience, manifested in reality.
Now, I expect one of you will take your countersink bit, and drill, drill, drill baby, drill, until the primer won't stay in. I suspect that will happen at about the same time the point of the bit begins to enlarge the flash hole.

What has not happened in this thread is for anybody to speak factually about using this method, within reason, and having a provable complaint about the result. Not one. I know why. It is because the method works well, and DOES NOT cause primers to fall out. It works even better than swaging at making the primer pocket usable again. Yes I have touched up some professionally swaged primer pockets when I experienced primers "sticking" on the way in.
https://thefiringline.com/forums/att...3&d=1409968327
This picture is an example of probably the most brass I have removed where the crimp was. It looks like a lot of bevel, BUT, look at a commercial non-crimped case head, and specifically note that the primer cup has a significant rounded edge. Also, note the the brass the primer pocket is NOT a perfect cylinder. Removing a bit of brass at these rounded corners does not materially lessen the bearing surface which does actually hold the primer in (with no crimp). There is plenty of bearing surface in the primer pocket below that bevel. That is the part of the primer pocket that holds the primer in.

This is a snip of a photo on Brass Bombers website, 5.56 processed (swagged). The swaging tries to move the brass back where it started before crimping. Notice the annular ring present (distorted brass). I have purchased and received brass just like this, from GIBrass. In my experience, some primers will still "stick". That is when I grab the drill and remove that visible ring, leaving a slight cut bevel. I am not faulting Brass Bomber or any other merchant. I am only showing what I believe is the residual issue with swaged primer pockets. Remove all traces of that ring, and the issue is gone for ever.

[hounddawg]

Marco the point I was attempting to make is that while all the rotating style crimp removers remove some brass the ones made for the purpose will not allow the user to take more than necessary for the job because of the design. If I were to lose mine though I would not hesitate to use the countersink method or in a pinch a razor blade or a pocket knife

[JeepHammer]

At what point does anyone see 'Harbor Freight' and not read 'China Junk'?

Drill stop on a center finder and done.

[mehavey]

I'll stick with this:
https://www.amazon.com/RCBS-Primer-P...ds=rcbs+swager

One stroke...
Done.

[Unclenick]

mikld,

Your link is fine because it takes you to the page where the seller has things he wants potential customers to see and where he can sell it to them.


The main drawback to the deep conical taper in Marco's first link, as opposed to removing brass at the surface with a tool that cuts and inside radius there, is just that it represents more removed brass volume. In the second, thumbnailed image, I don't think it does represent an appreciable volume difference. The case in the image from the first link is not likely to be an issue with moderate loads like a lot of the standard Garand loads with 4895 or 4064. Many actually run about 40,000 psi. Where I see potential for concern is with a load warm enough to start mushrooming primers. At that point the head having to inflate to fill the extra volume would stretch the side walls enough to incur some added risk of piercing.

Just musing: I note that I've missed removing crimps from a few cases over the years that I didn't discover until I was priming, and that some portion of the time I could seat a primer in them anyway, albeit a bit stiffly. That's because decapping has already pushed most of the crimp out of the way. I'm thinking an interesting experiment would be to try just chucking a slotted round head screw in a drill and applying that to burnish the primer pocket edges without any more cutting than the slot does and see if that's enough to get primers to reliably seat.

[F. Guffey]

Guffey and others think the countersink removes brass that holds the primer in. I think that is an erroneous assumption.

Marco Califo, I said I made tools for crimping primers, I said I told my friend at the gun show I have never seen cases that were uglier than his cases that had been tapered and or beveled around the primer pocket, I even went so far as to say I have experience with core hole plugs, freeze plugs and welch plugs. After the top of the primer pocket hole has been tapered and or beveled there is no way I can crimp the primer. .

I believe tapering the top of the hole is a bad habit. I do not do it.

A smith called and said he had a bunch of things he wanted to give me, a few of the pieces were like the primer pocket swage mentioned by Mehavey, I explained to him what they were and I told him why he was given them away. All of the anvils were bent and or crushed because reloader do not measure the thickness of the case head, Adjusting the anvil to swage the primer pocket on a thin headed case will result in a bent anvil when used on as thick headed case. And then there were the BAR RCBS dies, I explained to him the BAR dies were small base dies and he kept the BAR dies and ordered replacement anvils for the swage die.

F. Guffey

[F. Guffey]

I'm thinking an interesting experiment would be to try just chucking a slotted round head screw in a drill and applying that to burnish the primer pocket edges without any more cutting than the slot does and see if that's enough to get primers to reliably seat.

Back in the '50s Hatcher said he simply used his pocket knife. Again, I started on 3,500 cases I purchases for as little as $14.00 for 1,400 cases, a lot of those cases still have the primer; how else could I convince someone the cases are once fired or never fired.

F. Guffey

[Don Fischer]

Originally Posted by Marco Califo

I am sticking with the $8 sharp bit in a drill.
And I think I can do 1000 in 90 minutes.
That's 5 seconds each:
2 seconds picking up
1 second in the drill
2 seconds putting down.

I have heard that the Dillion is the best swager. But rather than push the brass around, I prefer to remove the interfering brass, and bevelling nicely.

Do you really time yourself to find out how long a process take's? Anyone else do that?

[Marco Califo]

Don Fisher, I seriously do count the drill "run" as "one-one-thousand": Stop. I admit the two second pick up and put down times are estimates. Those two steps include quick looks for How bad is it? and Did I cut enough?. Personally, I am concerned with quality, and no, I do not try to beat the clock. If I have 2 or 5 hundred or a thousand, I do not calculated a budgeted time try to meet it.
The point I was trying to make is that it is not a slower process than swaging.

[Marco Califo]

I'm thinking an interesting experiment would be to try just chucking a slotted round head screw in a drill and applying that to burnish the primer pocket edges without any more cutting than the slot does and see if that's enough to get primers to reliably seat.

UncleNick, I am thinking you mean a philips head screw driver bit. If so, I have done that. It works, it takes longer. I have tried pocket knives and flat head screw drivers too, with passable results (but no benefits) Judicial use of a counter sink is faster, and with practice, the cutting can be far, far, less than the picture I recycled from when I first started using the counter sink bit. On average I use one quarter to one half as much cutting. That is an interesting point about mushrooming, I will watch for it in the future.

[Marco Califo]

mehavey, I have one of those RCBS set-ups. I hated it and abandoned its use. I found it did not produce consistently acceptable results and needed to be adjusted for each case maker. IMO the drill works and gives immediate visible feedback of how you did.
But by all means, do what you want to.

[Unclenick]

Marco,

What I had in mind was that using a roundhead screw as a poor man's muzzle lap is an old idea, and Lee makes its chamfering/deburring tool with just a slot as the cutting edge, so I thought a round head might work. May need to be at least case-hardened to keep the "edge" up, though. The question is whether you really need to remove the crimp brass or just burnish it. The swagers don't remove it, but they do push pretty hard.

I think RCBS improved the press mounted swaging tool at some point not too awfully long ago. They used to get some complaints about bending. So if yours was older, then maybe they are better now. I've never tried one, as I bought the Dillon tool circa 1990.

[F. Guffey]

I think RCBS improved the press mounted swaging tool at some point not too awfully long ago.

When I was a kid we used a double shovel, it had spring release when we hit a stump or the top of a 2,000 pound rock. I could never figure why RCBS did not determine the release point on a spring when swaging primer pockets. They designed it to swage or bend.

F. Guffey

Anyhow, I measured case head thickness, I found .060" difference in case head thicknesses. Yes, I sorted but that did not stop other reloaders from bending 'their' pins

F. Guffey