Brass Prep

[Lancaster]

There's nothing wrong with the tool. It was a very experienced gunsmith who pointed out the dangers of using primer uniforming tools without a means to accurately seat the primers to just a few thou max below the head and with the greatest of respect to your own experience, we are trying to provide a little wisdom to someone new to reloading who may not understand the ramifications of seating primers too deeply which is absolutely a possibility when using uniformers. I still maintain that there is absolutely NO benefit in using a uniformer for those without the experience to understand potential dangers, and that pockets only require crud cleaning out.

Uniforming pockets and de-burring the flash hole is only done once, and my uniformers have have a fixed collar, it is physically impossibly to cut the pocket deeper than spec.
How could I seat the primers too deep, unless I was really leaning on the priming tool, and that applies whether the pockets have been uniformed or not.?
The far more frequent issue is people seating primers too shallow which is potentially far more dangerous, rounds going off out of battery, light strikes, hang fires etc.

 

[LuckyEddie]

Measure to confirm COL and COAL?
I would also chamber a few of your new little darlings (usual safety precautions apply) - better to find any issues now rather than far from home…. You also might wish to routinely include checking for case head separation as an integral part of your process which will give you a very good opportunity to examine each case for any splits/cracks etc…
Good luck and welcome to the dark side!

Thanks for the advice.

Once the brass was cleaned, I took the longest cartridge and checked the length 1.695”, less than the max of 1.700”
All the others were shorter but not by much.
First round loaded I checked for clearance in the magazine, chambered and fired.
I polish the neck and shoulder by hand as the tumbler doesn’t quite clean them well enough.
In doing so I check for splits and cracks, binned two during this part.
One was split at the neck the other was close to the base.

 

[angusb1]

As I’m still buying my tools and wherever possibly/reasonable to do so, am of the opinion ‘Buy once cry once’, what would be a good priming tool to accurately seat the primer?

I have the Lyman E-zee Hand Priming Tool which is good. I had a batch of brass with tight primer pockets where it was difficult to seat the primers far enough in with it and I then started priming on my Lee Classic Cast press which I found I preferred. You get a feel with either for how much force is needed to seat the primer correctly and I find that with my brass and primers, I prefer to use the press rather than the hand priming tool. When priming on the press I sometimes find it handy to tip the primers into the tray of the hand priming tool as it will automatically turn them all the right way up if you tap it.

 

[Foxyboy43]

Grand.
Here is something you might wish to add to your toolkit which will detect incipient case head separation before a ring shows and in advance of your breech going . Simply bend a flat piece of wire as shown, sharpen it to a point and run it up the inside of each case a couple of times as part of your inspection process. It will snag on any internal crack/split and that case must then be binned.
Some people use a bent paperclip - I bodged one with the metal stiffener from a wiper blade - works a treat!

 

[cjm1066]

Thoughts?

There's nothing wrong with the tool. It was a very experienced gunsmith who pointed out the dangers of using primer uniforming tools without a means to accurately seat the primers to just a few thou max below the head and with the greatest of respect to your own experience, we are trying to provide a little wisdom to someone new to reloading who may not understand the ramifications of seating primers too deeply which is absolutely a possibility when using uniformers. I still maintain that there is absolutely NO benefit in using a uniformer for those without the experience to understand potential dangers, and that pockets only require crud cleaning out.

Gunsmiths like stalkers have different opinions.

I uniform primer pockets, the Sinclair tool can't cut to deep, many cases will only have the cup cut on one side, showing it was uneven.

It's like uniforming flash holes, the occasional one has lots of burrs.

Do these processes make better ammo, the bench rest boys do it, it only needs doing once, to me it's a good investment of my time.