Decapping?

[smokjunkee]

Ok, I'm probably going to get a real simple answer, but here goes. I am starting to get into reloading and in reading a manual(Lyman's) & looking through Midways Master Catalog, I cannot find any info on removing the old primer. There is no reference to it in Lyman's, it only talks about cleaning & deburring the primer hole after decapping, which I assume means primer removal. I also could not find any tools in Midway that looked like they were for this task. Can anyone shed some light on this for me. Thanks
SJ

 

[griz]

First, welcome to THR.

Decapping or depriming usually is done as part of the sizing operation. The sizing die has a decapping pin built in and that pushes the primer out. There are special dies that only deprime, but this is a specialty thing for folks that want to remove the primer before they clean the case or some other specific reason.

 

[Chawbaccer]

Your sizing die has an adjustable stem going down the center of it. On that stem is a button to size the neck, also there is a pin at the end that will knock out the spent primer. Once the die is set up it is pretty much a no-brainer that the old primer will be removed while the case is being resized. There is dedicated de-capping dies but you probably wonl,t need one for a while.

 

[Ditchtiger]

Page 330 in the new Midway catalog has a Lee Decapper and Base for $3.59, product no. 279-408 or 636-747 for larger cases.

 

[smokjunkee]

Thanks all, most helpful! things are starting to clear up.

 

[BigJakeJ1s]

I deprime separately from resizing, using a "universal depriming die" from RCBS (Lee makes them also). Really just a bored-out sizing die that just holds the decapping stem, without touching the outside of the brass. I used to use a Lee hand press to do that, from my easy chair. Now I have a coax, and I deprime on it. That leaves the primer pocket open so it gets cleaned out while I tumble. I leave the depriming stem in my resizing die to punch out any tumbling media that gets stuck in there.

Andy