I will preface this by saying I am not a novice reloader. I have tens of thousands of rounds handloaded with 9mm, .38 Special, .44 Mag, .45 ACP, .223 Rem, and 7.62x39. I am new to precision reloading, however.
6.5 Creedmoor Hornady brass is making me lose my mind. This is 1x brass from factory loaded ammo (140gr Match ELD-M) that I shot. I deprimed, cleaned in an ultrasonic, sized with a Forster full-length sizer, and expanded with a Sinclair mandrel die.
I started Thursday night with a brand new Hornady hand priming tool and Federal Gold Medal Match 210M large rifle primers.. I made it through 50 cases and my hands and arms were howling in pain. I'll chalk that up to bad arthritis - maybe a hand tool isn't for me simply because of lack of hand strength and arthritis. Some primed with an amount of effort I expected, others required me to push the tool into the table with my body weight for them to seat flush. Some were still slightly proud (they'd wiggle if placed on a flat machined surface).
So on Friday, I tried priming on press with my LNL AP. Stopped after 10. More than half weren't seating below flush. But, the LNL AP is notorious for not seating primers deeply enough.
So, I mounted up my old Lee Classic Turret with a Lee Safety Prime. That's the press I have the most experience with and the only time I had trouble priming was if a crimped primer pocket snuck into the mix. Otherwise, a gentle shove seated primers with no trouble.
SWEET BABY JESUS. I *STILL* had problems seating these damn things. At times I was pushing hard enough to lift my entire reloading bench (an NRMA bench with all of my bullets and powder stored in it, so it's quite heavy). I ended up tossing about 10 of them that would not seat flush, at all, and got stuck in the shell holder. Know what kills time? Having to put on eye and ear pro, put the shellholder with stuck brass into a vise and gently hammer the shellholder off, hoping the primer doesn't detonate.
I mic'd the primers, all came in at .211" +/- .0005. I checked to make sure that I didn't have some kind of oddball Hornady CM brass with small primers - nope, small primers fell right out. I chamfered the pockets slightly using a Hornady primer pocket reamer that's normally used to remove the crimp from military brass. I tried seating some CCI 200 LRPs, same problems.
In summary:
-I used three different methods (Hornady hand tool, Hornady LNL AP, Lee Classic Turret)
-I used two different brands of primers
-I chamfered the pockers using a mil crimp remover
No matter what, seating effort and seating depth varied wildly.
Before I set fire to my reloading room... anyone have any other suggestions? Did I forget a simple step?
6.5 Creedmoor Hornady brass is making me lose my mind. This is 1x brass from factory loaded ammo (140gr Match ELD-M) that I shot. I deprimed, cleaned in an ultrasonic, sized with a Forster full-length sizer, and expanded with a Sinclair mandrel die.
I started Thursday night with a brand new Hornady hand priming tool and Federal Gold Medal Match 210M large rifle primers.. I made it through 50 cases and my hands and arms were howling in pain. I'll chalk that up to bad arthritis - maybe a hand tool isn't for me simply because of lack of hand strength and arthritis. Some primed with an amount of effort I expected, others required me to push the tool into the table with my body weight for them to seat flush. Some were still slightly proud (they'd wiggle if placed on a flat machined surface).
So on Friday, I tried priming on press with my LNL AP. Stopped after 10. More than half weren't seating below flush. But, the LNL AP is notorious for not seating primers deeply enough.
So, I mounted up my old Lee Classic Turret with a Lee Safety Prime. That's the press I have the most experience with and the only time I had trouble priming was if a crimped primer pocket snuck into the mix. Otherwise, a gentle shove seated primers with no trouble.
SWEET BABY JESUS. I *STILL* had problems seating these damn things. At times I was pushing hard enough to lift my entire reloading bench (an NRMA bench with all of my bullets and powder stored in it, so it's quite heavy). I ended up tossing about 10 of them that would not seat flush, at all, and got stuck in the shell holder. Know what kills time? Having to put on eye and ear pro, put the shellholder with stuck brass into a vise and gently hammer the shellholder off, hoping the primer doesn't detonate.
I mic'd the primers, all came in at .211" +/- .0005. I checked to make sure that I didn't have some kind of oddball Hornady CM brass with small primers - nope, small primers fell right out. I chamfered the pockets slightly using a Hornady primer pocket reamer that's normally used to remove the crimp from military brass. I tried seating some CCI 200 LRPs, same problems.
In summary:
-I used three different methods (Hornady hand tool, Hornady LNL AP, Lee Classic Turret)
-I used two different brands of primers
-I chamfered the pockers using a mil crimp remover
No matter what, seating effort and seating depth varied wildly.
Before I set fire to my reloading room... anyone have any other suggestions? Did I forget a simple step?
