primer problum

austintexas

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Started to reload some 30 Remington today. Ran into a problem right off the bat. Primers didn't want to seat. I was using a Lee hand primer but have never had this problem before. I tried Winchester, CCI and Remington. Winchester the worst and the other brands not much better. Finally got out my primer pocket swedger and ran them all thru it. Some were tighter than others. Got them all primed, but not without a hassle. Have had to swedg military ammo but not civilian stuff. the brass was a mixture of Remington, Peters, Winchester, Remington-Peters. Mystery to me?
SWCA 892
 
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Some ammo makers seem to crimp civilian ammo when :

They are primed with "green" lead free primers ...

Sometimes semi-auto (30 Remington ) ammo gets the primer crimp treatment .

You never know when or where a crimped primer or small / Large primer is going to show up ... My advice is inspect every blessed case , sort for size and crimp ...when in doubt ... Primer Pocket Uniformer on every one ... handgun or rifle , military or civilian... check "Em All !
Gary
 
I found a batch of 35 Remington brass a while back that was crimped, had to run it all through the swager. I think it was W-W head stamp.
 
crimp

Even after swedging the primer pockets , the primers were a tight fit, never ran into this problem before. Yes, I use this ammo in my 14s, 141s, 8s and 81s.
SWCA 892
 
Occasionally in the past, Remington used to make runs of .30 Rem cases for sale. Doubt they still do that. I have made up several hundred cases from .30-30 brass, also have around a half dozen boxes of old Remington factory loads, probably from the 70s. Have a couple boxes of the white box ammo made by Remington for law enforcement, prison guards, etc. Never had a primer fit problem with any. I generally use a hand reamer to uniform primer pockets. I have a set of the large and small swages, but I prefer to use the reamer.
 
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I can see that primers may be more difficult to seat in some brass due to dimensional tolerance of the primers and pockets, but I can guarantee you with 99% + certainty that the primer pockets in the brass brands and caliber you list are not crimped!

All you need to do is look at the primer pockets, if they are crimped it will be visually obvious, at least to any experienced re-loader.:rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
primers

I tried 3 brands of large rifle primers. Winchester refused to go in the primer pockets, CCI and Remington would insert but were very tight. After swaging,
Winchester were still the hardest to insert. Well, maybe shooting these will loosen things up, The Brass was a combination of new and once fired.
SWCA
 
I had this problem 25 years ago. I thought the primers were bad and set them aside. My friend tried the primers in another cartridge and didn't have a bit of trouble.
 
I tried 3 brands of large rifle primers. Winchester refused to go in the primer pockets, CCI and Remington would insert but were very tight. After swaging,
Winchester were still the hardest to insert. Well, maybe shooting these will loosen things up, The Brass was a combination of new and once fired.
SWCA

Are we talking about 30 Remington or the 30 Remington AR that came out in 2008?

If 30 Rem is the brass recent or are we talking about a stash from 50 years ago? Because I try reloading some 45 ACP and 30/06 brass from the 1930s that the primer pockets were corroded.
 

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