Dillon 9mm die issue UPDATE Post#36

[protohyp]

Looks like the old primers are the problem - they are falling apart rather than being pushed out.

[protohyp]

I have had that happen in the past with several different pistol brass that had been wet tumbeled.

I call them ringers. I believe they are caused from the primers more of less being stuck possibly from the wet tumble process some water gets in there and seizes them.

[racinjason233]

I would change dies to start with. If Dillion is stumped work with that stage only until issue is sorted. I’m interested in the solution. I’ve never seen it.

[oddjob]

What if you put the "offending die" on the 650 & try it....See what happens?

[randomBytes]

I just meant the spent primers.
They are clearly not behaving normally.

I don't see how the die could be relevant - it's an insanely simple mechanism,
pin pokes through the case into the primer to pop it out.
In this case, the primer is refusing to pop-out, instead the bottom is breaking off. Note that the pin is not poking through a deformed primer, the primer is failing at the bottom of the cup. Brittle?

[randomBytes]

Oh, any chance the cases have been over pressured? So many people shooting major 9 these days.... (not at a police range though ;-)
That might weaken the primer?
Do they look normal before going into the press?

[ar15barrels]

The only time i have seen a large number of "ringers" like that was when the fired cases had been wet. I found corrosion was glueing the primer in.

This is my guess as well.
Water will make the primers corrode and the corroded primers will peel open before they get pressed out.

The solution will be to decap ALL of this batch of brass that might have some of these cases and then cull them before they accidentally end up going through the swaging and priming stations.

[ar15barrels]

Some of the buckets I have have been in the rain but I’m not at any of those buckets

Don't mix the brass in those buckets that got wet with good brass.
They will be suspect for this type of depriming behavior.
Keep those buckets separate until you have decapped them all and culled the cases with bad primers left stuck in the pocket.

[protohyp]

Don't mix the brass in those buckets that got wet with good brass.
They will be suspect for this type of depriming behavior.
Keep those buckets separate until you have decapped them all and culled the cases with bad primers left stuck in the pocket.

[protohyp]

Dillon 9mm die issue

Oh, any chance the cases have been over pressured? So many people shooting major 9 these days.... (not at a police range though ;-)
That might weaken the primer?
Do they look normal before going into the press?

[sunnysmarine]

I had this happen before never did find the exact cause, When I did run into the sealed primer pocket cases I could really tell by the necessary extra force to deprime on my 550 some tore some just domed outward, but was easy to figure out you can see the red sealant around the primer, the brass I had the most trouble with similar looking to yours was wet tumbled by the seller, thousands of cases maybe had 10 per hundred give some trouble

[ar15barrels]

The brass for the most part is stored in ATA flight cases and covered but stored outside under our patio cover but not exposed to rain but does obviously experience ambient temperatures.

Heating and cooling cycles help the corrosion.
All it takes is a little water to have gotten in the brass, like say one raindrop before you picked the brass up.
Then the moisture is captured in the fired primer and time/temperature has it's way with the expended priming chemicals and the water react against the primer cup and the primer pocket.

The outside of the case will look normal, but the devil is at work inside.
Decap all that brass immediately to save the ones that are not so bad yet.

[protohyp]

Heating and cooling cycles help the corrosion.
All it takes is a little water to have gotten in the brass, like say one raindrop before you picked the brass up.
Then the moisture is captured in the fired primer and time/temperature has it's way with the expended priming chemicals and the water react against the primer cup and the primer pocket.

I get it.

I've inspected a lot of the problem cases as well as some of the no problem cases. Some have a little corrosion in the pocket and some dont and but it seems more and more of this could be pointing to a moisture factor but i'm not sold on that yet because me and my friend have taken from the same batch that was walnut media tumbled and we are both 2000 rounds into our reload process and he has encountered zero. I dont see how he could grab a batch of 2000+ cases and not have one single 'moisture' contaminated shell when i grabbed from the same batch. I guess stranger things have happened

deducing from this he is on a 650xl and I am on a super 1050. he is using an RCBS decapping die and i'm using a dillon and both are carbide dies.

my first 1000 was with a PW motor connected and the next 1000 were manual with the second round producing equal amount of ringers on my 1050 as it did with the motor connected.

While this seems to point to either the die or the machine i can at least narrow down to there being zero obstruction to the primer ejection hole or shell plate.

so in my mind this leaves the die but us engineers who understand the die would question how this could affect the primer base blowing out. In theory the spring should be the only thing wearing out through the amount of cycles its gone through but it is only the primer pin that comes in contact with this the primer itself and that has been changed 2 to 3 times with the same result.

I would probably resort to changing to the RCBS die on my 1050 to see if there is any solution to this really strange conundrum.

[ar15barrels]

I get it.

I've inspected a lot of the problem cases as well as some of the no problem cases. Some have a little corrosion in the pocket and some dont and but it seems more and more of this could be pointing to a moisture factor but i'm not sold on that yet because me and my friend have taken from the same batch that was walnut media tumbled and we are both 2000 rounds into our reload process and he has encountered zero.

Lack of corrosion on the case does not mean that the primers were not corroded.
The priming pellet is in the bottom of the primer, right where the primers are failing.
The priming pellet has the chemicals that are hygroscopic and will cause the corrosion.
As long as you get the primer out, there will be no damage to the case.
Tumbling won't get the moisture out of the primer as the media will not go in and out of the flash hole and dry out the inside of the wet primer.

As for why you got unlucky and your friend got lucky, he simply got the ones that had never been wet or he stored them in such a way that they never corroded.
Perhaps you storing them in sealed cases in the weather and him storing them in open 5 gallon buckets in his garage is the difference.
The cases stored in sealed cases that get warm/cold will trap the moisture in the form of humidity while open buckets will let the cases dry out over time.

[slayer61]

I can't believe I'm the first to say

Buy once, cry once