Lake City Primed Brass

[gregintenn]

I've never purchased any primed brass before, so I have a stupid question. Am I to assume this brass is correctly sized and ready to load, or should I take the decapper pin from my sizing die and size them first? I bought it from David if it matters. I didn't think to ask him at the time.

[Dolomite_supafly]

The necks might be a little loose. But if you are careful and crimp the bullets in place you should be find. Other than that they are ready to load.

Dolomite

[gregintenn]

That is what I thought, but I decided it would be good to ask before loading a bunch of them. The necks, so far, seem to have plenty of tension, and a loaded round works through the action of my rifle just fine. Thanks much for the quick response.

[Guest Fruit jar]

A friend bought some from David. He ran the sizing/decapping die about half way of the case. The bullet wasn't as tight a fit then. He messed up a couple of necks before trying this.

[mikegideon]

I just remove the decapper and size them. Takes some of the dings out of the bodies.

[Caster]

Use a lee factory crimp die and put a good stout crimp in place. I've done ..........several .....with spectacular results.

[gregintenn]

Is there really a reason to crimp them if I have sufficient neck tension? I've loaded scads of 223/556 that I've resized, without crimping, and have had good results.

 

The powder charge is a compressed load, so setback would be hard to do. I can't move the bullets forward with finger pressure.

Edited February 11, 2013 by gregintenn

[Dolomite_supafly]

If there is enough neck tension there is no need to crimp. I took the sizing mandrel and reduced it by .002". This gives me plenty of neck tension without deforming the bullet like crimping can sometimes do.

You can also do like Mike suggested and remove the pin altogether. I would just buy a spare decamping pin and break the pin off then size it down by .002". That way you can size them without removing the primer and have plenty of neck tension.

I use a collet neck sizing die and a redding body did to size my brass. By seperating the steps the brass lasts a lot longer.

Dolomite

[mikegideon]

I must be old fashioned. I'll know that I have good neck tension when it goes thru a sizing die, especially with brass that's had a bullet pulled. Then, I'm gonna crimp on top of that. I'm not gonna load hundreds of rounds and not know. If I was shooting them in a bolt gun, it wouldn't matter. I'm not.

[Dolomite_supafly]

For my defense ammo I make sure they have a decent crimp. For my range ammo I use neck tension only, the reason is my range ammo generally is loaded with SMK's so I want to make sure they are not deformed. And to be honest I have never had a bullet set back using neck tension only. I have even removed the sizing mandrel and really squeezed the neck down to give it a try. It definitely has a lot of neck tension.

The LC primed brass for SHTF gets a trip through the collet die. Then after seating it gets a crimp. I will say my SD numbers shrank when I crimped.

I am not sure having a crimp only is more secure than the entire undersized neck holding the bullet. It would seem like it would but I honestly do not know or have a way to test it.

Dolomite

[mikegideon]

Collet die is a neck sizer, so your tension is gonna be uniform. The crimp normalizes the shot start pressure, which almost always makes accuracy better. I don't neck size (only) anything that I'm gonna run thru an AR. It gets a full length size just to make sure the shoulder and everything else is in the right place. On the gun I measured, the shoulder (and head space) moves 4-6 thousanths every time you fire a round. My Lee dies put the shoulder 2 thousanths inside of zero spec. My Redding die is set up for the same amount. The only way I feel confident about uniform headspace in an AR is to full length size my brass every time.

 

Doesn't matter in a bolt gun. The headspace will always be long, and you force it into compliance with the bolt.