Your preferred Case Prep method?

rookie7

New member
Good morning,

Please share your preferred case prep methods/tools/setup.

Preferably for bottle-neck rifle cartridges.

If you can include pictures that would be wonderful.

Thank you
 
Case prep. Well, that depends.

If they are dirty or fairly dirty they go in my vibrating tumbler with some dry walnut/corn cob mix. If filthy they go in my Thumler's Tumbler.

If the still look pretty clean (a bit of shine) no polishing. Sometimes I ream the primer pockets internally to get rid of any possible burrs. Usually will clean the primer pockets, and most often will put a slight bevel to the inside of the case mouth with my Lyman VLD chamfer tool. If I have a lot of them I will chuck it in my battery drill. If they need trimming (not often they do as I usually shoot my loads on the mildish side) I trim them then I chamfer. If there are no signs of case separation or necks splitting they are ready to be sized and primed. And when priming if any of the caps to in with too little resistance then I mark the case with black permanent marker and toss it after firing.

That pretty much it. Been working for me for around 40 years now. I might change it around a little but that pretty much how I do it.
 
Very similar to RustyDust, with difference being my loads run hot and they need to work in both bolt and AR if possible.
Only re-load three four calibres, use 8208 xbr, want to keep it simple.

- dump brass in media cleaner for 4 hours, add a few drops of floor polish to give brass extra shine
- inspect each case, check head & case dia against Wilson headspace gauge, for early rejection
- 2 lite squirts of Case Slick then full size re-form in regular size die
- wipe lube of off case with shop towel
- clean & chamfer primer socket

- load into power drill Lee case holder then trim with Lee trimmer
-- still in drill case holder, chamfer inside & outside with L.E. Wilson Chamfer and Deburring Tool
-- still in drill case holder, smooth case with shop towel, feeling for any bumps

- remove from drill, clean inside case from burrs or left over media
- check inside case with paper clip feeler gauge
- check overall case against Wilson headspace gauge

This is probably the slowest process on this forum,
but I worry that a bad case is going to slip through and damage me or hangup in an AR..
 
Tumble, size with one shot(dump a bunch of brass in a trail mix tub and shake it. The brass will naturally point straight up so it gets in the necks), trim with drill hooked up, prep center(inside/outside deburr, military crimp remover, uniform, brush pocket), hand prime, chargemaster, bullet, chargemaster, bullet, chargemaster, bullet...

That's the long way. Otherwise it's size. Check length. Prime...

It's still crazy to me how many times you look at your cases through the whole process and somehow every once and a while you will seat a bullet and look at it and it will be scarred up. I hate that but I'm glad I catch it but you never know how many get by unless it's catastrophic.

Those prep centers are amazing

Does anyone use the 3 way cutter for trim mate? My cutter is pretty dull and it makes huge burrs. I just read that the cutter is steel. Maybe just the carbide replacement will be the one to get.
 
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I deburr every flash hole, uniform every primer pocket, trim after the first firing and as need afterward. I weight sort religiously, and also cull any cases that show a significantly inconsistent fill level.

If I'm really hunting bugholes I clean up the necks.

I use One-shot before tumbling or Unique after.

I clean my necks with one pass of a bronze brush, and always clean the primer pocket.

I use stainless media and anneal after every third firing. Even if I use stainless media, I'll run them in polished cob for an hour..... Because super clean to me really just means unprotected, and I think the polish prolongs oxidation. Lemi-shine is for dishes...

I polish my dies and clean them regularly. I even use acetone on them and then buff them with unique on a microfiber cloth inside.

I'm sure you guessed it.... But I get a lot of compliments on my ammo, haha.
 
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I use the stainless steel media with the Lemi shine but add Armor all car polish - water will not stick to the brass -
 
In relative order of execution, even though I wouldn't necessarily do all of these together (i.e. I probably haven't ever neck turned after annealing in the same batch, but these steps are in the right order):

[*]Deprime on dedicated Lee single stage press with Lee universal decapping die[*]Ultrasonic clean with Hornady Ultrasonic Cleaner 2L[*]Clean up primer pockets if needed (not usually)[*]Anneal (if applicable) on a homemade rotary annealer[*]Lube on RCBS pad (usually just out of every 4 or 5)[*]Resize (neck or FL), either on Forster Co-Ax or Lee Turret[*]Trim to length RCBS pro trim (pro trim converted to a II by adding a universal holder)[*]Debur and chamfer on Hornady 3-in-1 (cheap) powered case prep tool[*]Neck turn and polish necks (if applicable) with Forster neck turner and Lee shell holder[*]Load on Forster Coax or Lee Turret[/list]
 
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I polish my dies and clean them regularly. I even use acetone on them and then buff them with unique on a microfiber cloth inside.

Just wondering _ are you talking about Unique the pistol powder ?
 
Mine get vibrator tumbled in Lyman Tuf-Nut rouge impregnated media, full length sized if for my ARs, neck sized if for my bolt actions, slipped into the Lyman case trimmer for length sizing, run through my RCBS case prep station, primed, charged, and bullet seated..

If I'm full length sizing brass from an unknown history, I apply the RCBS case lube with my fingers rather than the lube pad to cut down on 'dimples' in the shoulders due to too much lube, as most shoulders have to be set back slightly..For neck sizing I use One Shot and let it dry thoroughly..

My Lyman trimmers (2) are mounted horizontally on the wall and have been converted for use with a cordless electric drill motor...The pan below catches most of the brass trimmings..One is set for my .204s and the other is used for my .223s and 6.5 Creedmore...

I have three presses, a Lee progressive for handgun, an old Pacific 'C' type for pulling bullets and that can be unbolted and transported for loading test loads at the range, and a Forster Co-Ax..This is what my old loading bench used to look like before we moved last July...


The coffee containers on the shelves are my brass management system...Each contains brass for a specific rifle, or handgun caliber (3), and in various stages of preparation...I only load 100-200 at any given time and will use those until the primer pockets get loose, or they develop stress cracks/splits that won't be avoided by annealing..
 
I put a mark on whatever box they're in. (20,50, 100 count plastic boxes.)

I mark the box when I put the live ammo in it. When that box is empty, I know it's been shot x amount of times.

When they get annealed, I circle the tally marks. Then I know how many times it's been shot since it's last annealing.

With premium brass, where it can sometimes be fired more than 20 times, I usually just write the number of firings on the box, and remove it with acetone each time I reload it.
 
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Used a Hornday case prep center for about 30 minutes yesterday. It's only a month old. I wasn't really impressed with it. It was nice that everything was combined into one place, but for $400 plus I can't see spending that on it compared to what I already do.

I do mine in stages right now. I use the Lee hand trim tool, and I put the base in a cordless drill. I trim, chamfer, debur, clean case neck. I switch out the base later for an adapter for a primer pocket reamer where I use that to ream pockets then I grab a brush to clean it out.

The Hornady center is a little faster than my method, especially since I am prepping about 2k .223 cases, but $400 worth of faster. If I was only doing 20 to 50 cases at a time it certainly wouldn't even come in to question.

I think the RCBS three way cutter would be a more worthwhile investment. I am going to give it a try b/c I also have a Lyman bench mount trimmer.
 
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