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Can you seat primers too deep? Without even trying


Norther

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  • 3 weeks later...

Since reading this I have been experimenting a little. What seems to work the best for me with the 650 is to briefly pause after seating and apply about 15lbs of smooth firm pressure. This gives me a consistent .008"-.009" seat depth which seems to be the most reliable in the different revolvers I have.

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An update: I trimmed a tiny bit off the firing pin return spring and increased the mainspring tension (yielding a 6 3/4 pound pull). Now I seem to be at 100% ignition. I did order a C&S pin, but will not install it before the Nationals.

I have resumed my normal primer seating method which has served me well for so many thousand rounds, as habits are hard to break anyway. The anvil is printing very slightly. Toothguy's method above sounds like what I do.

I sent 6 cases to Hunter at Starline. His depth micrometer measures the pockets at .121", their max tolerance, but within spec. My caliper or method must be off by the .008. If this is indeed the case, I owe them an apology for claiming their brass is out of spec. I think I'll go buy a Starrett caliper and a depth micrometer now....

See you in Barry Il in a couple weeks!!

Edited by six-gun shooter
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Measuring depth is pointless for me, since I use a hodgepodge of mixed brass in my .45 wheelguns. But for those of you who have nice matching brass and know the proper seating depth for your primers, I am wondering if the K&M priming tool w/gauge would be a useful thing to have:

http://www.kmshooting.com/catalog/primer-seater-tools/primer_gauge.html

I

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Yeah, you're overseating them. And yeah, you do have to worry about depth.

Don't lean on the handle. Give it this stroke: forward until you feel the primer start to engage, then a firm, medium-fast shove, like you're messing with a friend and mock-fighting, shoving his shoulder without any real ill intent. You should bounce away from it a bit, but not flex the reloader at all. When I get a good rhythm going I lean forward a few inches then shove off a few inches, over and over. My failures start at .004 and below and .014 and above.

Thanks for this tip, Matt. I've got a 625 that was slicked up and Carmonized by Bosshoss on this forum. The trigger came in at 5.5, but I would get occassional lite strikes that would go off the second time around. I suspected the primers were seated a little high, so I gave your method a shot and it's been 100% since. I keep a closer eye on the primers before putting them in clips and if one didn't seem to sit down just right, it goes in the practice pile. I've had one or two that might have been too deep and watch for that as well. Thanks again!

Edited by sbcman
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  • 2 months later...

Thought i'd cross reference this here ( had this in reloading section )since it'll probably help revo guys more then anybody else.

I shoot a lightened action revolver which works best with federal primers seated between .008 and .010.

Now unfortunately the xl650 doesn't have any sort of depth adjustment for seating primers, and I have a problem either over seating them by pushing too hard, or to shallow by not pushing hard enough.which would result in light strikes

Brainstormed a little bit today and came up with this, an adjustable over travel stop for the handle. made of some scrap pieces of steel I had in the garage.

I knocked out 50 or so pieces of brass and measured each one... Way more consistent .008-.009 typically(PPU head stamp which I have a metric ton of ) , but federal likes to seat a touch shallow at around .0065-.007ish, so does winchester.

Yes, it's ugly, Yes I know the welds suck, Yes I know revolvers are stupid.

But - here it is... let's just call it still in it's " prototype stage "

-alec

9258668496_300597fc8c_h.jpg

The only issue now is it in the way of the ammo tray, - just notched it out and proped it up on 2 primer boxes and she's good to go. I'm going to try to come up with some sort of extension piece for the ramp so I can have the tray sit a little farther away.

9258667274_f4650919c3_b.jpg

In action:

Edited by alecmc
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LoL thanks.

I'm going to run it for a couple thousand rounds and see how she works out. Then i'll probably build version 2.0 with needed corrections and modifications of whatever it may need.

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