elChupacabra!
member
- Joined
- May 29, 2008
- Messages
- 562
Here is a picture of a fun little piece of brass that gave me quite the time...
I batch my ammo by headstamp, but when I pick up range brass or have brass that I don't have at least 20 or 50 pieces of, I throw it together into "mixed" batches that get loaded up for plinking at low(er) pressures with little accuracy expectation. Since this mixed brass often has crimped primers, I run it through a Lee Decapper die first to avoid damaging my Forster FL resizing die. Well, this piece apparrently has an undersized flash hole - SO undersized, it almost pulled the decapping stem out of the die when I raised the handle! So I went through all my batched mixed brass and culled all of this stuff out, since I don't have a flash hole uniformer and it's not worth it to me to spend that much effort on range brass anyways.
I went ahead and decapped a few more of them, and yes, they all have the same problem... the flash hole is off-center for some, too. In preparation for taking the picture, I ran a primer pocket cleaner in there for a few seconds, and you can see where it actually polished a ridge that the decapper pushed up, the hole is so small (the shiny ring right around the hole itself).
So, first, I was wondering if anyone could identify this headstamp for me... and second, I want to issue a warning to those of you who (like me) pick up range brass - you may want to stay away from this stuff unless you want to deal with uniforming the flash hole and possibly damaging your die.
I batch my ammo by headstamp, but when I pick up range brass or have brass that I don't have at least 20 or 50 pieces of, I throw it together into "mixed" batches that get loaded up for plinking at low(er) pressures with little accuracy expectation. Since this mixed brass often has crimped primers, I run it through a Lee Decapper die first to avoid damaging my Forster FL resizing die. Well, this piece apparrently has an undersized flash hole - SO undersized, it almost pulled the decapping stem out of the die when I raised the handle! So I went through all my batched mixed brass and culled all of this stuff out, since I don't have a flash hole uniformer and it's not worth it to me to spend that much effort on range brass anyways.
I went ahead and decapped a few more of them, and yes, they all have the same problem... the flash hole is off-center for some, too. In preparation for taking the picture, I ran a primer pocket cleaner in there for a few seconds, and you can see where it actually polished a ridge that the decapper pushed up, the hole is so small (the shiny ring right around the hole itself).
So, first, I was wondering if anyone could identify this headstamp for me... and second, I want to issue a warning to those of you who (like me) pick up range brass - you may want to stay away from this stuff unless you want to deal with uniforming the flash hole and possibly damaging your die.