I deprime them all with a Lee universal depriming die before they go in the tumbler to be cleaned, then sort, trim, and reprime with a hand primer of the appropriate size. I took the depriming pin out of the sizing die on my progressive loader, and the priming ram, and just run them all through together. I prefer the feel of hand priming the cases, anyway, as priming on the progressive is one of the things that is prone to problems, particularly if the primer feed runs empty.
45 ACP Primer Pocket
- Thread starter stodd
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ReloaderFred
Member
It's not a new idea, and it's going to be here from now on. Just be glad you've got brass to reload. There is Small Pistol Primed .45 brass from CCI/Speer, Blazer (also CCI/Speer), Federal, Winchester, Fiocchi, et. al.
The same data is used with either primer and magnum primers aren't needed when using small pistol primers for the small amount of powder the .45 acp requires. If you weren't inspecting your brass before, you should have been........
Hope this helps.
Fred
The same data is used with either primer and magnum primers aren't needed when using small pistol primers for the small amount of powder the .45 acp requires. If you weren't inspecting your brass before, you should have been........
Hope this helps.
Fred
glock40sw23
Member
wish i had a range where my problem was picking up extra brass with wrong primer size, most ranges pay more attention to someone picking up brass than they do to safe gun handling.
109Hammer
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Hold on. Let me write that down
Yeah, but if you aren't accustomed to checking for something, you won't see it.
I went through something similar to this recently with 9mm. I'd accumulated some 60,000+ cases over the years. Started going through it finally when I found I couldn't buy ammo anymore - divided in to two lots of about 30k.
Separating out S&B steel cased was easy. Used a magnet.
Then I ran across another problem on the progressive, and looked up the headstamp. Found that I had a brand of European brass that had small flash holes, too small for my decapping die (boxer, but the flash hole was much smaller).
So I went through 30k rounds again. (Second time I went through them all).
Then I ran across another problem - tight primer pockets on another brand. So I went through all of the brass AGAIN (this is now the third time I went through 30k casings). I culled those AND this time I went through and pulled each unique headstamp out of the batch, so I could look the rest of them up.
Found out I had some Norinco crap brass mixed in, and some other undesirables (A MERC, etc). So I have to go back through the 30k lot AGAIN to pull those out. This is now the 4th time I've gone through the 30k batch.
And I'm STILL finding the occasional soft-chinese guppy belly, or AMERC brass with a flash hole off center, or a GECO headstamp with a small flash hole that sticks my press.
Moral of the story? After 4 times through the 30k rounds there's still brass I missed, and I was looking SPECIFICALLY for a certain headstamp. Probably something so minor as my brain telling my hand to throw a cull in the wrong bin. (As I found some W*W 9mm in the BAD bin, which tells me that very likely an equal amount of bad brass ended up in the GOOD bin.)
Just a little neuron misfiring to make my hand toss the brass the wrong direction. Or my eyes lying to me.
So I've got a bin full of 50,000 45 ACP brass I've collected over the years, 98% 1x, shot by me personally, the rest range pickups that I got when policing my brass.
Some have small pistol primers.
Find them. Oh, and don't miss any. Certainly your eyes will NEVER lie to you about the diameter of the hole you are seeing, going through 50K+ rounds.
NOW you see why I'm not happy about this crap?
They used one size primer for 100 years and for NO GOOD REASON (it ain't broke) they decide to CHANGE it?!
To hell with that. That's a bad engineering choice no matter what. There's one cardinal rule of ammunition standards. They are STANDARDS, meant to keep everything the same.
mljdeckard
Member
I suppose it makes a difference if you are using a progressive press. I'm using a hand primer tool, I'm already handling and inspecting every case as I prime it anyway.
ReloaderFred
Member
I've got a .45 acp case headstamped 1954 that has a small pistol primer. It's been used in other parts of the world for years. It's also rumored, but I haven't confirmed, that John Browning first designed the .45 acp case with a small primer, but the Army insisted on a large primer.
Ranting on and on about the switch to small primers in .45 acp isn't going to do any good, since they're here to stay. I'm not saying that it's good or bad, just that it's reality. Either deal with it, or don't. That's your decision.
I just simply sort out the small pistol primed .45 brass and when I get about a thousand, then I load them up, just like the rest of the .45 brass I've got. I'm not new to this game, and I've seen a lot of changes over the years. I've seen the change from large pistol primers in .38 Special/.357 Magnum to small pistol primers, but I'm betting that the majority of reloaders have never even seen a large pistol primed .38 Special case. Stuff happens and you adapt..... Or not.
Hope this helps.
Fred
Ranting on and on about the switch to small primers in .45 acp isn't going to do any good, since they're here to stay. I'm not saying that it's good or bad, just that it's reality. Either deal with it, or don't. That's your decision.
I just simply sort out the small pistol primed .45 brass and when I get about a thousand, then I load them up, just like the rest of the .45 brass I've got. I'm not new to this game, and I've seen a lot of changes over the years. I've seen the change from large pistol primers in .38 Special/.357 Magnum to small pistol primers, but I'm betting that the majority of reloaders have never even seen a large pistol primed .38 Special case. Stuff happens and you adapt..... Or not.
Hope this helps.
Fred
James2
Member
Yep, its a pain, but you do have to sort them. I have just been tossing the small primed ones in a bag and haven't loaded any. I have plenty of brass without them. It is only a problem when I shoot at a public range and pick up some range brass since my own reloads are all large primed.
Like some of the other guys, I sort and inspect my brass by hand, and hand prime as well. So, I'm happy with whatever brass I can get these days. Thought I'd laid up a decent supply of LPP and SPP cases. I was wrong, though. Never thought reloading components would get this scarce or costly.
mike.h
Member
Fishslayer
Member
Learn something new every day. GECO has always gone into my "others" bag with the odds & sods that I don't find enough of to make a batch.
Now they'll join the Amerc in the scrap can.
ReloaderFred
Member
I load Geco brass just fine. If using a Dillon sizing/decapping die, Dillon has the largest diameter decapping pin in the business. I've measured them all and they all vary in diameter.
If you're not using a Dillon die, then chances are your Geco brass will decap just fine.
Hope this helps.
Fred
If you're not using a Dillon die, then chances are your Geco brass will decap just fine.
Hope this helps.
Fred
Regarding small flash holes, you can also uniform them. I do this on all of my rifle brass for bolt actions; and picked up another one to use on handguns. The one I have takes a bushing on the shank to "fit" it to different straight wall cartridges / lengths.
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