Armory Sponsor
Posted: 5/8/2010 9:21:30 AM EDT
|
Hey guys, Well I have a bunch of .223/5.56 that im prepping. It will be loaded mostly for plinking and what not but I have a question regarding primer pockets. Ive read mixed reviews regarding them. Some say to clean them each time, some say to leave them alone and other say to unify them each time. In the past I have used my drill with the unifier. It unifies and also cleans the carbon out but I am afraid that could possibly tear up the primer pocket. I could use my drill with the pocket cleaner on it as that makes short work of them... So what say you? |
|
Quoted: I will use the unifier one time to open up a crimp and that is it. On rare occasion with high accuracy ammo I will clean the pocket out, but not for blaster or for pistol ammo. Do you think there is any harm done using one every time? I have a ton of brass and keeping track of what has been uniformed and what has not is hard... |
|
Quoted: No if your using the wire brush, I doubt it, unless you push really hard each time. If your using a RCBS prep station and the reamer, it can only go so far in.Quoted: I will use the unifier one time to open up a crimp and that is it. On rare occasion with high accuracy ammo I will clean the pocket out, but not for blaster or for pistol ammo. Do you think there is any harm done using one every time? I have a ton of brass and keeping track of what has been uniformed and what has not is hard... |
| I bought a uniformer from midway. Used it on my WCC brass. This brass seemed to need alot of attention. Tried it on some winchester an r p and these primer pockets were close to perfect. Removing minimal if any brass. The WCC removed on almost everyone, quite a bit of brass. Before using the uniformer primers were abit tough to put in. Some did not look level. After they went in great and look right. |
|
I have never spent much time with primer pockets in the past, when I was loading mostly precision 308 and it never seemed to affect load performance.
Of late, I have started shooting my ARs more and have really committed to loading lots more 556. The 1x 556 primer pockets just seem a lot nastier than the Lapua 308 primer pockets I am used to. So, I decided to buy a Redding Primer Pocket Uniformer. Chucked it into my Dewalt cordless and was amazed at the results. In just a few seconds the pocket looks brand new. At first, (and still a little) I was concerned about the amount of material it seemed to remove from the pocket. I spoke with some of the more veteran members here and was told the material was mostly coming from the corners of the pocket and wont cause a problem. I have seated a few primers to check tightness, and they seem to be fine. I plan to uniform all my 1x 556 cases once and then just leave them alone after that. Unless there seems to be nothing at all gained from doing them, and then I may just skip the step, because even though the drill makes quick work of the pocket, it still is an extra step in which each case has to be individually handled, making it slow. |
| I had to say "pie" because it all depends. What am I loading for, how grungy are the cases and the pockets, etc. I often wind up with pretty clean pockets just by tumbling the cases after sizing them. A pocket doesn't have to be pristine for most loads, but if I'm loading something special, as in testing out a new load, I'll clean the snot out of the pockets. I have always used an RCBS brush to do that, but I'm leaning toward a pocket uniformer AND a flash hole uniformer (doesn't Lyman's tool do both?) in the near future. |
|
I don't clean mine by hand, they get cleaned when I tumble my cases in the SS media. This cleans them and gets rid of every ounce of carbon inside and outside the case.
With regard to uniforming the flash hole and everything else, I typically don't bother. But I'm all about loading plinking ammo since I'm not a fan of the benchrest crowd |
|
Quoted:
I have seated a few primers to check tightness, and they seem to be fine. I plan to uniform all my 1x 556 cases once and then just leave them alone after that. Unless there seems to be nothing at all gained from doing them, and then I may just skip the step, because even though the drill makes quick work of the pocket, it still is an extra step in which each case has to be individually handled, making it slow. Purpose of the uniformer is to set primer seating depth. Uniformers only cut on their end and should not have any effect on primer pocket tightness unless you cock the brass at an angle as you uniform thereby cutting the side of the pocket and loosening the pocket. Can't say I have noticed any real gain either except those situations where the primers are at the max side of the height dimension and the pocket is at the low side of the depth dimension resulting in the primer seated too high (it happened to me). |
|
Quoted:
I bought a uniformer from midway. Used it on my WCC brass. This brass seemed to need alot of attention. Tried it on some winchester an r p and these primer pockets were close to perfect. Removing minimal if any brass. The WCC removed on almost everyone, quite a bit of brass. Before using the uniformer primers were abit tough to put in. Some did not look level. After they went in great and look right. The WCC was probably military brass with crimped primer pockets. You were removing the crimp. The other cases were non crimped commercial cases so you felt minimal brass being removed. |
| Uniforming primer pockets is a benchrest technique and accomplishes very little for ammo meant for blasting. It does, however, increase safety by reducing the possibility of a slam fire. High primers are a thing of the past if you uniform your pockets. It's worth it to me just for that reason alone. |
| I use a Sinclair carbide uniformer - never wears and there are no adjustments so the depth is always correct. I use it every time to clean, and find that it always removes a bit of brass; the pockets get shallower with each firing, which could eventually lead to a problem after many reloads. |
|
Quoted:
Quoted:
I will use the unifier one time to open up a crimp and that is it. On rare occasion with high accuracy ammo I will clean the pocket out, but not for blaster or for pistol ammo. Do you think there is any harm done using one every time? No. Does an excellent job of cleaning out the crud. I have a ton of brass and keeping track of what has been uniformed and what has not is hard... Easy to tell by if metel was removed or not. |
|
Quoted:
I don't clean mine by hand, they get cleaned when I tumble my cases in the SS media. This cleans them and gets rid of every ounce of carbon inside and outside the case. With regard to uniforming the flash hole and everything else, I typically don't bother. But I'm all about loading plinking ammo since I'm not a fan of the benchrest crowd This here. One benefit of the rotary / ss media method is spotless cases inside and out.. I uniform once when initially processing and call it good. |
|
Quoted:
Quoted:
I don't clean mine by hand, they get cleaned when I tumble my cases in the SS media. This cleans them and gets rid of every ounce of carbon inside and outside the case. With regard to uniforming the flash hole and everything else, I typically don't bother. But I'm all about loading plinking ammo since I'm not a fan of the benchrest crowd This here. One benefit of the rotary / ss media method is spotless cases inside and out.. I uniform once when initially processing and call it good. Another fan of the SS tumbling method. Started doing this method and have no intentions of ever going back to the vibratory method. |
|
Quoted:
I load .223 for a living. Cleaning the primer pockets for blasting ammo is a waste of time. If you are loading ammo that matters, it's still a waste of time. But I do it anyway just for the heck of it. YMMV ZM I allways clean my primer pockets on all my ammo. that I reload. I am a competiton shooter and so is my wife we practice with the same quality of ammo. that we compete with. When I clean the primer pockets it's the last step in my case preparation and the last check of the status of the brass. I allways do it my the book. That's IMHO. Mike |
Armory Sponsor