Federal Brass - small primer pockets?
Have some once fired, bought them new and fired them myself, Federal cases, with FC .223 stamped on the bottom of them. Removed the primers with a Lyman universal decaping die, wet tumble/cleaned them, let them dry for a couple days, lubed and sized with a Hornady custom grade .223 FL sizer. Used a Lyman crimp removal tool (small primer size) on a Frankford Arsenal prep center to remove what appeared to be a crimp at the primer pocket, trimmed them for length and deburred inside and outside of the necks. Thought I was good to go. Straight out of the gate had issues getting the primers to seat (Winchester Small Rifle primers). Thought maybe I missed the crimp removal on a case or two, and employed the crimp removal tool again, it turned easily in the pockets and did not appear to remove any material, so I tried the pocket uniformer tool...it too went in with out hesitation zero material was removed from the primer pocket. Tried a couple different priming tools - RCBS universal priming tool with the appropriate insert & tried using the press mounted priming tool. Still had issues with the primers seating. When a primer did manage to go in it was crooked, or sat too high, or mangled/flattened and otherwise not seated properly. Kept on going and out of 20 or so cases, 8 of them were rendered unusable. Wondering if a swage type primer pocket tool is in order? Perhaps the lot of the cases (300ish give or take) need to be filed in the dumpster or recycled. In the 5 or so years I’ve reloading I have not had this issue after removing the crimp. I tested my crimp removal tool on some LC cases (requiring crimp removal) and had no issue seating the WSR. Don’t think its due to “worn tooling”. Wondered if some ole sages have come across this issue before and are willing to offer some suggestions or solutions.
Thank you for your guidence.
