USGI .38 special brass

[fatelk]

I've loaded military .38 brass off and on over the years, usually just mixed in with other brass. Recently I got a bunch of it and decided to load several hundred on the Dillon. I never had so much trouble before. I was cussing the stuff before I was halfway done.

No matter how careful I was, I got the occasional crushed primers, crushed brass in bullet seating, and many of them had to go through the FCD just to chamber. Any secrets to loading these without pulling one's hair out?

[376Steyr]

1. Some, but not all, GI .38 brass had crimped primers. The crimp has to come out before the new primer goes in. Spotting a crimped pocket isn't always easy. Probably best to swage/ream all pockets, just to be sure.
2. Case walls tend to be extra thick, If you're sizing bullets over .357" (don't we all?) loaded diameter can be bigger than a tight chamber. Swaging with a FCD might be the only way to get them to chamber.
3. Dillon powder measure expanders just put a crude flare on the case mouth. This is okay for jacketed, not so good with cast. Doing your expanding with a Lyman M die will probably solve your case buckling problems.
Personally, I rarely use my Dillon anymore for doing a complete loading cycle of fired brass in and loaded rounds out. I prefer to use it in two stages, the first one to make sized-primed-expanded cases and the second to charge powder and seat bullets. When things start going wrong it is a lot easier to troubleshoot that way.

[Char-Gar]

I think the secret is probably don't use a progressive reloader.

[Hardcast416taylor]

This a classic reason why I do the priming off my Pro-Jector press to avoid crushed primers. I sort out the military brass as I am running them thru the sizer/decapper die on the press as these cases really feel different than commercial cases. I have a large bag of probably 3-500 or more of these cases that I`ll get rid of one of these days.Robert

[smkummer]

If you run into the WCC cases, it is a very light crimp and usually don't require that the pocket have its crimp removed. If you have the LC cases, they crimp the primer pockets like it was a belt fed machine gun and its takes much more effort to remove the crimp. Typical Govt. over run insisting that no matter what cartridge was specified, it HAD to have crimped primers.

[fecmech]

I've been loading a couple thousand WCC74 cases since the late 70's in .38 spl. Mine had no crimp but they are just a tad thicker than commercial brass. I load on a CH Auto Champ progressive which has an expander almost identical to the Lyman "M" die and have no problems. You probably have crimped primers , that would certainly explain the priming difficulty. It's good long lived brass. The only downside is it's not the best brass for wadcutters due to it's thickness.

[fatelk]

I think the secret is probably don't use a progressive reloader.

Thanks everyone. I'll save these for the old Rockchucker, like I used to load everything on. I can appreciate the Dillon for it's speed, but before I got it I had loaded many thousands of pistol rounds on a single stage. It goes pretty quick when you have a system.

Most of them were not crimped. I tried to sort out the ones that were before sizing, to decap and ream the crimp before priming, but occasionally missed a few.

I'm loading the little Lee 105swc, sized to .359", light load of 700x. I'm curious to see if I get any leading once they've been through the FCD.