used primed cases

[cheese1566]

I just scored 250 pcs of used 223 brass from a garage sale of a retired teacher/ex-varmint hunter guide. $10 wooo-hooo!
They are primed cases but don't know what with. He was cleaning out his stuff and didn't recall what they were primed with a 15 years ago. He thought they were regular small rifle. I plan on tumbling them clean and resizing them again to be sure of tolerances and basically starting from scratch.

How do I deal with the primers? How do you deprime live primers from cases?

or can I tumbled them in dry cob and load them anyway as they are?

I have fired the occassional primed empty case, but these are too many to do.

what do I do? I have always started from scratch...

[trooperdan]

Clean 'em and load 'em! You certainly could deprime them.. but at the price & scarcity of primers, that would just be wrong! :) Just go slowly on the stroke, don't slam them into the sizer die and you'll be fine! But I'd load them as is myself!

[Old Ironsights]

Make great plinkers as is. Just load em up. Tumble & deprime after shooting.

[runfiverun]

necksize them and fireform.
you never know they might be needing a good annealing.

[mike in co]

necksize them and fireform.
you never know they might be needing a good annealing.

unless you chamber them first, dont count on them fitting ur chamber if you only neck size.
so check them first, but if the old guy resized the "old" way...they should fit almost anything....so check first.

mike in co

[runfiverun]

thanks mike, i should have mentioned the make sure they fit part.
sometimes you just do stuff, and don't think it needs to be mentioned.

[HeavyMetal]

I'd pull the de capping pin from my sizer and then, with the gun handy, run them into the die only far enough to make sure they chambered easily.

Then reload as usual.

Using a viberating case cleaner with primed case's just doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I wouldn't be worried about them going off but I might be worried about what all that shaking might do to the location of the priming compound.

I'll also agree with Trooperdan primers are to hard to come by to waste any! 223 case's are so small I don't think primer type comes into play. if these were 7 mm rem mags then I'd do different.

[monadnock#5]

Since you can't be sure how many times they've been fired, it wouldn't hurt to run a bent paper clip into some of the cases to check for incipient case head failure.

+1 on don't tumble them. No need to take a chance plugging the flash hole with grit and media.

Although there is no way to reliably inert a primer short of dropping the hammer, duds are a fact of life. Just for giggles you might fire off 10 or 20 of the primed cases. For me, a greater than 10% failure rate would reject the whole lot.

[captaint]

Cheese, If they're that dirty and you just have to clean them, use a little 3/0 steel wool and rub them up a bit. If they chamber OK, load & shoot. In all likelyhood, they're standard SR primers. Enjooy Mike

[anachronism]

I wouldn't tumble empty primed cases. If you get a piece of media stuck in the flash hole, you could experience a hang fire, or even a total dud. It sounds like they may need to be sized anyway. I have successfully deprimed cases with a decapping die. I went very slowly, making sure the decapping stem didn't make sudden contact with the primer. You will probably need to check your case length too. 223 cases seem to grow pretty quickly.

[Jim]

I'd pull the de capping pin from my sizer and then, ...

I wuz wondering how long it wuz gonna take before somebody mentioned that.:bigsmyl2:

[mooman76]

Try chambering a couple cases and if they fit freely, you shouldn't need to resize them. Wipe them off with a clean rag and load them.

[Tom Herman]

[QUOTE=anachronism;575504]I wouldn't tumble empty primed cases. If you get a piece of media stuck in the flash hole, you could experience a hang fire, or even a total dud.QUOTE]

I use corn cob found locally, and that happens to be the Harz bedding and litter from Wal-Mart.
The stuff is irregular, and trends towards large grains.
I recently tumbled a load of .223's for a very good friend, and about 20% of the cases were full of media. I had to take a set of fine tweezers and pull all of the crap out. Never again!
I could easily see how tumbling the primed shells with normal corn cob would plug the flash holes.


Happy Shootin'! -Tom

[Bad Water Bill]

What is all the noise about? Load em and shoot em. The original owner was a reloader so he de primed and sized them after inspection. Next comes primeing. The filling with powder and boolit steps are up to you. I still have primers that are FORTY years old and they all go BANG..