hornaday 308 "

[ebb]

Does Hornaday crimp primers on 308, ammo they load? I sized 50 of them tonight and broke 2 decap pins and also have about half of them that fit really tight in the shell holder. thanks Mark

[Misery-Whip]

I have experience with there Match brass. (Super performance 308 150gr) I have about 60 pieces. They do crimp primers, the round punch mark around the primer gives it away. Of these 60, 2 or 3 have hit the scrap bucket because they wouldnt go into my shell holder.

It is good brass. The factory loading was hot, and needed trimmed as once fired. But I have fired them 6 times since with 2000fps loads. And trimmed them 2 more times. I dont anneal.

I really dislike removing crimps...

[Milky Duck]

yes they do..BUT there is also other funky stuff going on..different headstamps on different batches with different case capacities.......also heard of one honest chap who doesnt talk crap who got a box with undersized primer homes..eg a std primer wouldnt fit,the hole was just too narrow and no they werent small rifle primer brass either... they started crimping when superpreformance came out..a good twirl with your case deburring tool will sort the crimp out..but getting spent primers out sometimes takes a bit of force.
I champher the primer pocket mouth about a mm ,the new primers slip in very easily afterwards.

[Thin Man]

A few months ago I came into a batch (around 150) of Hornady .308 brass that was unusual. The necks on these fired and lubed cases were the devil to press into a sizing die, then worse to get them out of the die. I set them aside for a while but went back to them for an experiment. I annealed a few cases and tried the sizing die experiment again. Everything went well. Having found success I did the annealing fix on all the rest of the cases and now they are ready to be loaded again. Not sure what caused these cases to be so tough, seems they had to have been at least soft enough for the original manufacturer to form the neck and shoulder sections but that was where all of the love ended.

[1Hawkeye]

Although not .308 I had some Hornady .22-250 brass that wouldn't fit in the shell holder there wasn't enough gap between the top of the rim and the back of the case. But this was quite some years ago. I guess they crimp the primers for the M1A match shooters.

[ebb]

Thanks guys i had never seen this on commercial cases, military yes but not commercial.

[barkerwc4362]

The only reason the military crimps primers is for use in fully automatic weapons, i.e. machine guns. The US military does not crimp it's M118LR load. That is a 7.62x51 long range load using a 175gr match bullet. It is designed to be fired in M14s, M110 (AR-10), and bolt rifles. Regular 7.62x51 NATO loadings have their primers crimped. Hornady seems to like to crimp their primers.Bill

[sureYnot]

The only reason the military crimps primers is for use in fully automatic weapons, i.e. machine guns. The US military does not crimp it's M118LR load. That is a 7.62x51 long range load using a 175gr match bullet. It is designed to be fired in M14s, M110 (AR-10), and bolt rifles. Regular 7.62x51 NATO loadings have their primers crimped. Hornady seems to like to crimp their primers.Bill

I thought it was so one could traverse water and still get ignition.

[1Hawkeye]

I thought it was so one could traverse water and still get ignition.

No it's to keep the primer in place so it doesn't blow out and tie up the gun at a critical moment.