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Depriming brass
SteveM74
Member Posts: 98 ✭✭
I have been doing a lot of reading on the forums on how to reload. It seems everyone has their own process within the main process.
My question is how do you deprime fired brass prior to cleaning. From what I have been reading you dont want to resize and deprime dirty brass as it cant hurt the dies. What process do you use to go in this order?
My question is how do you deprime fired brass prior to cleaning. From what I have been reading you dont want to resize and deprime dirty brass as it cant hurt the dies. What process do you use to go in this order?
Comments
You can sometimes back out the sizing die and extend the deprime assembly and deprime without sizing depending on the cartriage, but the expander button on bottle neck cases will still be working your dirty brass.
I've also used a larger cartriage size die combined with a smaller expander button to improvise a universal deprime unit.
A universal decapper, as mentioned, would probably be a little faster. A nice, shiney case may be a matter of pride, but is not critical to the functionality of the reloaded case.
-With carbide dies, if the brass looks fairly clean, I just rock and roll, and clean after sizing. If there's obvious dirt on it I still tumble. But carbide being very hard is less prone to scratching.
-Otherwise, yes, cleaning is a good idea, so as not to mess up your dies in the long term. I go back and forth on this. Sometimes I tumble, then size; other times I use my ultrasonic cleaner, then dry and size. Sometimes I just put the brass in a container with a tight fitting lid and some boiling water and soap and a little citric acid, and shake for a few minutes.
-Then size.
Now the real question is, what next? That sort of depends on your lube. If you're using a water based lube like Lee's, once dry it won't contaminate powder, and there's no special need to remove it, other than so as not to get the lube in your gun. And sometimes I just load and wipe off the external lube, if a small batch.
Otherwise, or if you use an oil based lube, which most are in some fashion, they need to be cleaned again to prevent contamination of powder and primers. Again, how you clean is less important than cleaning in and of itself; the only downside to tumbling again is the media can get in flash holes and plug them. I've satisfied myself with a chronograph that a little media in the flash hole is not an issue, IF the primer will seat properly; otherwise a frustrating afternoon can be spent poking at it with a dental pick. Still that's not ideal. What you want is a tumbling media that is fine enough that it doesn't plug the flash hole- various blasting media are a good choice.
This is precisely why I have gone over to neck sizing with Lee collet dies for all bolt guns- no lube is needed, hence just one tumble.
There is no need to decap before resizing, but it won't hurt if you want to.
Then I bought a .45. A polished case is more likely to feed reliably, so I bought a tumbler. Now I clean all of my brass.
I've discovered I can clean them in walnut media, deprime/re-size, then polish them with corn cob media with polish in it. They come out looking new and the flash holes are clean.
This has worked just fine for me for thousands of .38 sp/.357 mag/.44 sp/.44 mag/.45 Colt/.454 Casull rounds I've reloaded....
http://www.harveydeprimer.com/
In short, I tumble first to keep junk out of my die and then size/deprime.