Decapping .223 military brass

[alleycat]

:?
Just obtained a quantity of once-fired .223 military brass which I hope to re-load for use in my Browning lever action. Any advice on de-priming the crimped primers? Any special care needed when reloading compared to commercial brass?
Thanks for your input!

[Lloyd Smale]

lee makes a decapping die that works for any caliber its a must have for military brass also after decaping you will need to either ream or swage the crimp out of the primmer pockets. Dillion makes a swagger I believe lyman and rcbs sell reamers.

[Crayfish]

I've never had a problem reloading military 223 without any additional work over what you would do with commercial brass.  They have always deprimed and reprimed very easily.  The brass tends to be a little thicker, so your max loads will be slightly lower than the book max in most cases.

Larger military brass (ie. 300WinMag) has needed swaging or cutting of the primer pocket in order to reprime, but never .223.

Good luck ... Crayfish

[bigdaddytacp]

:?
Just obtained a quantity of once-fired .223 military brass which I hope to re-load for use in my Browning lever action. Any advice on de-priming the crimped primers? Any special care needed when reloading compared to commercial brass?
Thanks for your input!

...I often use a hand deprimmer with a hammer just to save my die decapper....the newer dies for the military calibers often have beefed up decapp units but mine are old and well used.......I use a RCBS primer pocket swager kit on military cases.....223 and 308......adjusted correctly according to directions I don't have any rim distortion or problems and they then load just like commerical cases but I do prefer to swage or ream the pockets the one time to avoid the problems with primer seating that can happen with un modified military cases...some batchs are better/worse than others as to the crimp in the pocket......also as noted drop back or rework loads when swithching to military brass from commerical brass as the volumne and thus pressure CAN change....good luck and good shooting!!!

[jerrl]

I got a great deal on some pull down LC milsurp 5.56 and bought 2k.  Turns out that even using my RCBS reamer it is still a booger to reprime and I hate to spend $85 on the Dillon swager to swage $25 worth of brass.  Something here doesn't jive.

[KN]

I just use a chamfer tool in a drill press and put a chamfer on the primer pockets by hand where they have been crimped. Just don't get carried away and put too much on them.  I did 3000 of them this way and have had no problems with primers at all.  KN

[Joe Kool]

I use a larger sizing die, like a 22-250, to deprime military 223 cases. The case does not touch the case, the depriming rod just knocks the primer out. Have a few pins on hand, some primer holes in military cases are far off center, and you will snap a pin once in a while. To remove the crimp, I use the RCBS primer pocket swager. It fits on your reloading press and work very well.  

[boneguru]

dillon makes a great tool for decapping mil brass, the crimp has a tendency to break pins, Raymond