Originally Posted By: Plant.Onejust because the factory ammo has crimped primer pockets doesnt necessarily mean its bad brass. it just needs a little more love the first time you reuse it.
i know hornady crimps its primers on 300 blk. and i just dug through the brass box and sure enough the few peices of i have of my hornady 223 have crimps reamed out of them. same for their 308 amax match, although those have been swaged vs reamed. i wouldn't be surprised if all their ammo is.
the good news is - crimp removal is one of the few things in brass processing that you truly only have to do once!
if you want to speed things up vs using your uniformer - get a RCBS miltary crimp remover and chuck it up in a hand drill. you can ream a pocket cleanly in about 2-3 seconds flat. and unless you really screw up, its almost impossible to over ream a primer pocket. i've used it on hundreds of cases.
if you happen to have any lyman primer pocket tool tips like the pocket cleaner or reamer, you can use them as a stem for the crimp reamer. any 8-32 threaded post will work.
if it makes you feel any better, federal 223 is crimped as well - both the American eagle line, and the FC headstamp in the red 100rd bulk boxes walmart sells. Its not just a characteristic of military brass.
[edit] reamers are great if you dont have to do a lot of brass. they're affordable and easy to use and almost everyone has a hand drill around to run one in. if you have to do a lot of brass, a swagger is the way to go. on-press swaging is pretty simple and only a few $$ more than the reamer. its also easier on your hands since you don't have to hold every case as it gets reamed. one difference in swaging is you will likely have to adjust your swage die every time you hit a hew headstamp, so keeping things sorted during this process is very helpful. many consider it the preferred method as you dont remove anything from the case. personally i have yet to notice a difference, but it may show it self down the road as my brass ages and goes through a few more cycles.
I'm well aware of crimped brass, I've removed crimps on easily 20k 5.56 cases...the pocket on these Hornady .17 hornet cases are not the easy 10 second job to fix up that a typical crimped case is...the whole pocket appears to be tapered. Crimped primers you take a small ring out near the top, these things you cut chips all the way to the bottom of the pocket. There was enough material to remove it was bogging down my RCBS prep center when I was running my pocket uniformer in the brass.
This ammunition was bought in November 2015 from Midway so it's fairly recent brass.
In hindsight I would have just purchased brass rather than ammunition to shoot and then get the brass....these pockets are not worth the aggravation.
