LoboGunLeather
US Veteran
As part of my recent binge of reloading I discerned a need for a thousand or so 9X19 to keep the old Browning Hi Power happy. Among my horde of reloading stuff I found a few thousand 9mm cases which had been sitting around for several years.
That brass came to me from a guy who became very frustrated with his inability to run it through his Dillon progressive without problems. At that time I diagnosed his problem as being the crimped-in primers common to US military ammo, something us older guys dealt with all the time back in the 60's and 70's.
US military specs call for the primers to be crimped in place to lessen chances of stoppages in automatic weapons, which can be caused by the primers backing out of the pockets. After primer seating a crimping tool of annular shape is used to crimp metal around the primer pocket inward to secure the primers in place.
No problems for the reloader, but we have to know what we are dealing with and how to deal with it. It occurs to me that quite a few of our younger members may not have dealt with this issue, but are likely to encounter it if reloading military brass for the 9mm, 5.56mm, or 7.62NATO rounds.
In general, brass with crimped primers will process fairly normally, with routine sizing and depriming (although some reloading set-ups may experience damaged or broken decapping pins because of the increased force needed to de-prime these cases). But when the priming stage comes along the reloader is going to find it impossible to seat a new primer, with the usual result being crushed primers, and total stoppages of progressive presses can result.
The cure is to remove the primer crimp. This can be accomplished in two ways:
1. A primer pocket swaging tool can be used (RCBS, Lyman, others). This will swage the metal of the crimp and reshape the primer pocket mouth to a smooth radius to permit easy seating of new primers.
2. A primer pocket reaming tool can be used (also offered by many makers). These tools fit into the primer pocket and cut away the crimped metal to leave a smooth radius. Both hand-driven and powered tools are available.
I have always used the reaming tools, and have both small and large primer sizes on hand. These have served me well for decades of use with .30-06, .308, .38 Spl, occasionally .45ACP, and now the 9mm. Removing crimped primers by hand takes about an hour per 150 rounds.
Photos show a couple of fired cases with primers (note the cratered and extruded metal around the firing pin strikes, indicative of the high pressures of NATO-spec 9X19), then 3 cases being process (two deprimed and showing the crimped metal, one showing the reamed removal of crimp ring), and one shows a reprimed military case alongside a reprimed commercial 9X19 for comparison of results).
That brass came to me from a guy who became very frustrated with his inability to run it through his Dillon progressive without problems. At that time I diagnosed his problem as being the crimped-in primers common to US military ammo, something us older guys dealt with all the time back in the 60's and 70's.
US military specs call for the primers to be crimped in place to lessen chances of stoppages in automatic weapons, which can be caused by the primers backing out of the pockets. After primer seating a crimping tool of annular shape is used to crimp metal around the primer pocket inward to secure the primers in place.
No problems for the reloader, but we have to know what we are dealing with and how to deal with it. It occurs to me that quite a few of our younger members may not have dealt with this issue, but are likely to encounter it if reloading military brass for the 9mm, 5.56mm, or 7.62NATO rounds.
In general, brass with crimped primers will process fairly normally, with routine sizing and depriming (although some reloading set-ups may experience damaged or broken decapping pins because of the increased force needed to de-prime these cases). But when the priming stage comes along the reloader is going to find it impossible to seat a new primer, with the usual result being crushed primers, and total stoppages of progressive presses can result.
The cure is to remove the primer crimp. This can be accomplished in two ways:
1. A primer pocket swaging tool can be used (RCBS, Lyman, others). This will swage the metal of the crimp and reshape the primer pocket mouth to a smooth radius to permit easy seating of new primers.
2. A primer pocket reaming tool can be used (also offered by many makers). These tools fit into the primer pocket and cut away the crimped metal to leave a smooth radius. Both hand-driven and powered tools are available.
I have always used the reaming tools, and have both small and large primer sizes on hand. These have served me well for decades of use with .30-06, .308, .38 Spl, occasionally .45ACP, and now the 9mm. Removing crimped primers by hand takes about an hour per 150 rounds.
Photos show a couple of fired cases with primers (note the cratered and extruded metal around the firing pin strikes, indicative of the high pressures of NATO-spec 9X19), then 3 cases being process (two deprimed and showing the crimped metal, one showing the reamed removal of crimp ring), and one shows a reprimed military case alongside a reprimed commercial 9X19 for comparison of results).
