Privi brass primer pockets.....

I noticed that Graf's had Privi 7.65 Mauser (Argentine) brass on sale, so I took the plunge and ordered 100. I've used Privi in several of my older military calibers and was always satisfied. They arrived several days later, nice and shiney and ready to go.

The first thing I checked was chambering in my 1909 carbine...no FL needed, so I gleefully began priming and that's where I ran into trouble. I was using a Lyman 310 tool (because I'm aquiring a set of dies for each military caliber I shoot) and was suprised at the amount of force required to seat each primer. I set up my ram prime in my Rock Chucker for a little more "oomph" and promptly distorted the rims on two cases in a row. At that point I stopped and set up my primer pocket swager and began running the cases through it. Each and every one went in easily so the pocket dimensions appear to be normal. I also reamed each pocket and made a slight bevel at the mouth of each pocket, thinking perhaps there was an unseen ridge. It still required a fair amount of force to seat each primer, almost like there was a small taper. I finally began seating each primer by rotating the cases and seating in stages, finally getting the primers level with the base.

I'm a little bewildered by this, as the primers are older CCI 200's that behave normally in every other case I've used them in. I'm hoping with use the pockets will loosen up just bit, but has anyone else run into this or have any suggestions?

Maybe a call to Graf's is in order ?

Might take a military primer pocket swage unit to get them seating better. Seems like a lot of trouble however for brand new brass.

I bought some Privi 7 X 57 mm brass about a month ago. Wolf LR Primers seat in them just fine.

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A while back, I had more or less same thing on some Privi 7.62x54R. At that time, no one had any brass available so I bought 100 rds of (Privi) loaded ammo from Graf's. After firing, I had problems seating primers in first few cases, so I went through the batch and chamfered all the primer pockets. Helped a little but didn't completely solve the problem so I switched from W-W primers to Federals and that seemed to take care of the issue. During my second (or, maybe, third) reload of those same cases, I noticed I was beginning to run short on Federal primers and switched back to W-Ws without any further difficulty.

Bill

Thanks guys. As I mentioned, I used a primer pocket swager and they all appear to be "normal", that is the swager entered the pocket with hardly any effort.

After reading my own post, it occured to me that I haven't check the diameter of the CCI primers. I just ASSUMED (I hate that word) that they were standard size. Since this box is quite old (green color scheme) I seem to remember a problem with CCI's quality control from years ago. They just might be a tad oversize, despite using them in other cases.

Whatever the reason, I lost four brand new cases before I got smart and started looking for problems. With the price of brass these days, never ASSUME anything!

never ASSUME anything! ........... Yep, that's right.

Out of curiosity could you mike your old CCI's and
compare them to some new Win. or Fed. and
share the results with us ?

This has got my curiosity up, I need to know what is going on here, if this is a broad based problem with PRIVI brass, I want to know, as it would influence my buying them in the future.

Ben

Ben, I just miked one primer at .212". Ever try to measure an individual primer? I ended up holding it with surgical tweezers! Now, a difference of .002 would result in a very difficult press fit. That's the same tolerance in most engineering manuals for press fitting a 2" hole! I think I've found my problem..the pockets are fine.

By the way, the price tag is still on this box of 1000.....$7.25! That should give you an idea of how old they are.

You just described the same exact problem I encountered last week as I was priming some IMI (Isreali Mil. Industries) .30-06 virgin brass. I was using some older CCI 200 primers also and was having a dickens of a time seating them. After doing about the same as you to the cases I changed to Rem. primers. Amazingly they all seated, 240 cases, with nary a bit of resistence. My conclusion is that the CCI`s of that lot are slightly over size.Robert

I bought Prvi 7.5x55 brass from Graf's last year. I don't recall if I was using WLR, F210, or RP 9-1/2, but I had some difficulty in seating primers with my RCBS bench tool until I chamfered the pockets first.

CCI primers were notoriously hard, and were not recommended for Dillon 550B back in the day, and your primers are at least that old.

i had difficulty loading some primers in the 308 lc brass from grafs. most were hard pressed and one even went off. about 4 primers were destroyed trying to seat them. my ears rang for little while. cutting some of the brass off the primer hole with a chamfer tool seems to work abit.

3006guns:

Sounds like you've got a handle on things now.

Thanks,

Ben

Again, thanks everyone.....glad to hear I wasn't the "Lone Ranger" on this one!

Yep had the same problem here with some cheap 6.5x55 brass (marketed as highland here in oz. Probably privi as well). Was ready to give the primer pockets a going over when I worked out it was the ancient CCI primers I was using. Near on buggered my Lee priming tool on those mongrels.

Brett

old cci primer think that's your problem .The older CCI were a little over sized and some were out of round. Think if you get some new win -rems- fed your problem will go away