How to clean Primed (unfired) brass?

[Mancolt]

I bought a few thousand 9mm and 300B/O primed (unfired) scrap brass from American Reloading around Black Friday. Some of the brass is mangled, but I'd estimate roughly 90-95% is fine and can be reloaded after depriming (many of the primers are in backwards). All of the brass contains unfired primers. I put an empty toolhead with a 9mm depriming/resizing die in it, and was planning on running all of the brass through my XL750 with just the first station occupied, and carefully depriming each case and collecting (for later use) the unfired primers. The problem is some of the cases appear to have been loaded, and there's a bunch of spilled powder in the bag. So I need a way to clean off the brass before sending it through my press, or I'll just end up with a big mess. I don't want to wet tumble because I can't imagine water and primers being a great combo, and I don't have a dry tumbler (but could get one, if that's my only option). Any ideas on how to clean off the cases (not looking for a perfect clean, just good enough for a first pass) without ruining primers?

[Ryan67]

You aren't gonna be able to reuse those primers once you get them out. Same goes for cleaning them, I wouldn't trust them once in the tumbler without a bullet. If you think they are good I would wipe down and load up the ones in straight and deprime the rest. Even then probably only use them for practice. 

[Mancolt]

Why can't the primers be reused if I don't tumble them or get them wet? After popping one of them out, it looked perfectly fine for re-use, so I reloaded it into the same case just to see if I had any issues. The photos are of a case that had the primer inserted backwards. With slow consistent pressure, it popped right out, and then I set the primer on the priming station and reprimed the same case. Nothing looks different between this round and any other that's primed using primers straight from a sleeve...

 

I just didn't lube the case before resizing on a carbide die, which is why the outside has that dull appearance or whatever.

[Banacek]

You can reuse the primers, i wouldn't trust them for competition.  

[Baragasam]

2 minutes ago, Banacek said:

You can reuse the primers, i wouldn't trust them for competition.  

 

I agree with this. And also be very careful when de-priming live primers especially with crimped pockets too. I don't even know how that is possible to deprime a crimped in primer. Just make sure you wear eye and hearing pro and not have any other volatile components around the depriming workstation. 

[Mancolt]

Quote

I agree with this. And also be very careful when de-priming live primers especially with crimped pockets too. I don't even know how that is possible to deprime a crimped in primer. Just make sure you wear eye and hearing pro and not have any other volatile components around the depriming workstation. 

Thanks, this was my plan as well. Eye and ear pro, with no other stations occupied, nothing else close to the press.  I'm sure I could accidentally set one off if I tried to deprime too quickly, since the decapping pin is essentially a firing pin. If I end up setting too many off, I'll probably give up or tumble them all and then trash the primers and keep the brass. But given what primers cost right now, I think it's worth it to try to recapture them, at least until 1 or more go off.

 

Also, I don't compete (yet) so these would just be used for plinking. To your point though, I'll segregate the primers and loaded ammo so I can track what the successful recapture rate is.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Mancolt

[Mancolt]

Back to the question at hand...anyone have ideas on how to clean the primed (but unfired) brass, that doesn't totally ruin the chance of recapturing a working primer?

[Baragasam]

Thanks for the kind reply @Mancolt

 

I suggest you do a dry tumbling method with corn cob/walnut media and a vibratory tumbler. Be sure to get the right media size so they don't get stuck in your cases and a media separator for that type of media. I personally use gold panning baskets with different mesh size to separate in layers but I don't think that would work for corn cob-style media, I use SS media. If money is not a huge concern I would get a harbor freight vibratory tumbler and some corn-cob or walnut media from your local hardware/pet store (usually used for lizards or something like that). There's also aftermarket media separators online so you won't have to pay for a name brand one like Dillon or Lyman. 

[Boomstick303]

When you reuse primers I could see a high chance of the primer backing out during firing.  I saw this happen in an AR and it caused all kinds of issues with the BCG and the trigger.  In my eyes not worth reusing unfortunately.  

 

As far as cleaning, I think you have to ask yourself is it worth wasting the powder and the bullets in making ammo with primers (after cleaning of some sort) that possibly would not work.  Cut your losses and remove the primers (carefully) and keep the brass.  

 

If you still want to try, why not just tumble the brass with the primers in a media sorter of some sort?  Just tumble the brass, do not dry tumble.  Or maybe dry tumble with no media and then use the media sorter to make sure all of the powder is out of the casings.  Tumbling the brass may cause enough force for the  powder to dump out of the brass.  Just a thought.

[Baragasam]

15 minutes ago, Boomstick303 said:

When you reuse primers I could see a high chance of the primer backing out during firing.  I saw this happen in an AR and it caused all kinds of issues with the BCG and the trigger.  In my eyes not worth reusing unfortunately.  

 

As far as cleaning, I think you have to ask yourself is it worth wasting the powder and the bullets in making ammo with primers (after cleaning of some sort) that possibly would not work.  Cut your losses and remove the primers (carefully) and keep the brass.  

 

If you still want to try, why not just tumble the brass with the primers in a media sorter of some sort?  Just tumble the brass, do not dry tumble.  Or maybe dry tumble with no media and then use the media sorter to make sure all of the powder is out of the casings.  Tumbling the brass may cause enough force for the  powder to dump out of the brass.  Just a thought.

 

Just to sound off of this, I would also make sure the primer has decent seating force before charging it with powder and seating it with a bullet. In the event like @Boomstick303 said, that the primer backs out and your powder spills everywhere. And if the primers don't fire off, you could also pull the cartridge apart again and save the projectile, powder and brass. 

[zombywoof]

16 hours ago, Banacek said:

You can reuse the primers, i wouldn't trust them for competition.  

This

 

I've done it and it works if you're careful. Just for practice though.

[AHI]

You may not like my suggestion.  Buck up butter cup. Knock the primers out. Then clean up your press.

Reuse if you feel they are good. Inspect for missing anvils before reusing.

Edited December 21, 2021 by AHI

[Ryan67]

I wouldn't trust the anvil to be in good shape after pushing them out of the cases. If it works for you and you trust it go right ahead. 

[Farmer]

I had a few that I re-used because of split cases that I didn’t catch. I reused them and set them aside, then ran them over the chrono. Two out of 5 were really weak and the other 3 were ok. Just so you know you could get a squib. 

[Mancolt]

Small sample size, but I took 6 rounds that I loaded up last night using the worst primers from the lot of recaptured ones. All 6 went bang. Just did some up close shooting drills, but they seemed to land exactly where my dot was sighted for normal (new primer) rounds loaded with the same powder and bullets.

 

I'll expand my testing and maybe load up about 100 rounds using the primers I've captured so far. If 95%+ of those go bang, then I'll probably take my time to recapture all of the primers from these shells. I didn't end up tumbling (dry or wet). Instead I just sorted everything by hand into 3 piles: Good brass + good primer, Good Brass + backwards primer, Bad brass + good primer.

 

The hard part is going to be getting the primers out from the brass that's really mangled. I was thinking about using a higher caliber sizing/decapping die (like a 45acp), since that should have extra space to allow the beat up brass to still go deep enough into the die for the decapping pin to get through the flash hole.

[Farmer]

One of the best die’s I’ve bought is a Lee Decapping die. That’s all it does but it does it well. 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Farmer

[AHI]

4 hours ago, Farmer said:

One of the best die’s I’ve bought is a Lee recapping die. That’s all it does but it does it well. 

I take it you meant Decapping.

Everyone should own some brand/type of decapping die.

[Mancolt]

Good call, I just ordered one from Amazon that should be here Friday. Thanks. Didn't realize there were universal decapping dies.

[Baragasam]

10 hours ago, Farmer said:

One of the best die’s I’ve bought is a Lee recapping die. That’s all it does but it does it well. 

 

I've had one and it's great for general depriming. But for crimped primers I find the Mighty Armory shorty bull is great as the decapping pin won't back out like the Lee one does as it's friction fit vs MA's capped design. But the Lee one does work somewhat as a redundancy in case the primer or whatever is being decapped is stuck in a way where normal forces can't decap by allows the priming pin to shift up instead of puncturing all the way through the primer itself. 

[Farmer]

16 hours ago, AHI said:

I take it you meant Decapping.

Everyone should own some brand/type of decapping die.

Yeah, damn auto Nazi. 

Edited December 23, 2021 by Farmer

[Farmer]

10 hours ago, Baragasam said:

 

I've had one and it's great for general depriming. But for crimped primers I find the Mighty Armory shorty bull is great as the decapping pin won't back out like the Lee one does as it's friction fit vs MA's capped design. But the Lee one does work somewhat as a redundancy in case the primer or whatever is being decapped is stuck in a way where normal forces can't decap by allows the priming pin to shift up instead of puncturing all the way through the primer itself. 

On All of the Lee dies that de-cap, sizers ect, it’s a good idea to take it apart an clean all the machining chips out of the lock nut. All the ones I have gotten have chips, rough threads and burrs everywhere. Once you get them cleaned up the collet nut can be tightened sufficiently to keep things from sliding. 

[Baragasam]

10 hours ago, Farmer said:

On All of the Lee dies that de-cap, sizers ect, it’s a good idea to take it apart an clean all the machining chips out of the lock nut. All the ones I have gotten have chips, rough threads and burrs everywhere. Once you get them cleaned up the collet nut can be tightened sufficiently to keep things from sliding. 

 

That's news to me, I'll definitely keep that in mind. Although I've decided to move towards Dillon Decap/Size combo dies instead now.