My experience reloading these has not been very good.

Most have been a BEAR to resize/deprime.  Many have had undersized flash holes.

I primed several & the primers sit high... (posted about this previously)...
so on the advice of my brethren here... I bought a primer pocket uniformer (Lyman).
It helped some... but they still are not like every other case... (WCC, R-P, LC... etc.)

So I found a Dillon Case gage... EVERY other brand round is perfect.  99% of the PPU's won't
go in past the rim.  The rim is often a pain to get in & out of the shell holder on the Lee trimer as well.

These were NEW cases I shot them once & am trying to reload them.  They shot fine the first time &
the NEW unfired rounds go in the gage fine.  It's NOT my chamber... because NO OTHER brass has
this issue after being shot through ANY of my 3 AR's... ONLY the PPU.

ANY ideas what is going on?  I'm thinking that the factory rounds are over/high pressure & difficult to
extract (though they do) & the rim is getting buggered.  But that doesn't resolve the primer issue.  Once
"uniformed" it should not be an issue regardless.... BUT it is.    Any ideas??

I have had some issues with PPU cases recently too.  With my particular batch, they all sized and gauged fine, put the issues came about during priming.  I could not get consistent seating depths or seating pressure.  Some would seat very easily, and others would require primer squishing force.  Quite a few of them would not seat below flush.  These cases were not crimped, so I don't know what the deal is.

On some of the cases I used a Hornady crimp reamer to try and open up the opening, this made the primer way too loose.  I was really looking forward to reloading these PPU cases, but have put them aside in favor of Remington and Lake City.

That's weird... this post vanished.

For the small flasholes, get a Lee Universal Decapper.

It will swage the flashole larger.

Lube the decapping pin every couple of cases to prevent the decapping pin from being pulled out.

What I used on a batch of IK 07 brass with tiny flasholes.

I had 3000+ PPU cases in a bucket in my garage.  The resizing process was nothing short of brutal.  Around 20% were somehow so out of spec that they were distorted beyond any repair in the sizing die.  This was on a Dillon 650.  I did the last 700 or so on my Forster and that brought the attrition rate down to around 15%.  No problems with small flash holes, just tons of destroyed cases.

Not a big deal in the long run tho; it seems like they either work or they don't.  All the ones that fit in the case guage out of my test batch (300 or so) have been run through my ARs a 3rd time with not a single problem.  I already had them so the 2000 or so I still can use cost me nothing.

I figured there was something FUBAR about this brass when I had a series of popped primers jam up the fire control mechanism in one of my ARs.  Too late to do anything about it since I had already bought several cases years before I ever decided to start reloading.  The irony is that I'd use my handloads in a life-or-death scenario way before I'd use the same batch of Prvi stuff.  A few of them also showed pretty distinct ejector marks on them.  Dunno if I got a few overpressure rounds or just a bunch of cases with shitty metallurgy.  My Stag didn't seem to care either way, except for the aforementioned primers popping out and jamming up the hammer spring and bolt lugs.

Well I tried 30 of these rounds yesterday.
They had "high primers" & the rim would not go into the Dillon case gage.

They all fed & fired flawlessly.  Accuracy was identical to the same load in
Remington, LC, & Winchester brass... (1" @ 100 yards).

I feel better now about the primer issue.... no slam fires.
I still have 400 cases primed so I will load them & just be cautious when I shoot them.
When I reload these the next time around I will uniform all the pockets.... though it did
not seem to totally correct the issue on the last 50 I primed since I got the uniformer.

Kinda disappointed to hear others have had the same issues... I had heard from people
here that this was good brass.  On the bright side, the guys that shoot all the new LC
SS109 loads were at the range yesterday... They don't reload & give me all their brass.  

I let them try my toys on occasion as a Thank-you gesture.  I have some cool ones & they
seem to get a kick out of it.  90% of the people at our club are pretty cool nice people.  

Is this the headstamp case that is significantly heavier than most other 223/5.56 cases?

same brass here, tag to monitor

It may take a little more work........But, HOW ABOUT?

1)  Deprime with a LEE military deprimer, it's the old hammer and anvil technique.  It'll de-cap and force the flash hole channel to conform to the pin size, all at the same time.

2)  A REAMER will ream any crimp (IF it's there) and will also ream the major pocket to the commercial spec.  It won't do anything for depth so......

3)  Use a depth cutter.  Yup, a little harder to find but, they are out there.

I figure...........once treated, you should be fine.  Unless the brass itself is just ^&%^#.

The rim and extractor cut specs. are just one of the querks of foreign brass (I guess).

Next time buy American.  Simple.

Aloha, Mark

I just reloaded a mixed lot of 100 Lake City and Prvi cases.  I used my Lee Universal Decapper to press out the primers.  Just go slow and lean on it.  After a few seconds, the primers stretch and buckle out of the case.  The Prvi has a much more aggressive crimp (distorts the primer pocket lip out of round or leaves an edge).  I had to use my chamfer tool to round and bevel the primer pocket.  Primers went in easy after that.

Some of my Lake City brass had barely any primer crimp (same bag of ammo) and didn't need reaming.  I wonder if that was the reason it was rejected/surplussed.

I recently noticed somilar problems with some Privi .308 cases I got,real tough to resize and then about 25% would not fit the gauge afte sizing.I'm going to avoid any Privi rifle brass from now on.

You are thinking of PMP from South Africia.

High quality brass weighs in the 103 to 104 gr range.

LC and Win go about 90 grs.

I load PMP brass 2 grs lighter than I would LC or Win. (same load)

Work up carefully, begin at "start" load.


Cleaning flasholes here.

I am working on a batch of mixed brass and had same problem with PPU brass. Hard to resize and a bunch won't fit in the gage after sizing. I don't have a boatload of PPU and I am tempted to scrap them. I can tell when I put one in the press and size it, it requires much more force to size and this will be my indicator to just pull it from the press and toss into the scrap bucket.