Primer Question

[natep4620]

I ended up depriming and trimming. I still have the primers and it's just for plinking loads but I think I'll try reloading 20 to 30 and seeing if they fire. I'm sure they will but not sure if it's worth the 12 bucks or so. I bought this trimmer cause it does both 223 and 308 with the collets supplied but quickly realized for trimming in bulk I'm gonna want something a little faster. The lee quick trim is looking good just I run a loadmaster and wonder about the shavings getting all in the press and what not....maybe I should change the heading of the thread to trimming tool suggestions haha
Probably suits my problem better

[JTROKS]

300 primers? Glad none popped on you, as I have seen a friend's press applying too much pressure while priming and set one primer off. The marks it left on the shell holder and priming ram got my attention. Friend was fine as he was wearing glasses. He did say he felt it on his left hand and scared the **** out of him.

That said I have done the same but at the most 2 dozen in one sitting. I deprime as slow as possible. Yeah yeah should've inerted them by dropping a couple of drops of oil. If I was to advice a novice not to do such a foolish thing, but I've been reloading for almost 30 years. I should've just chucked the primers but part of the experiment was to find out if they will work. All of them fired without any problem.

[gunboat]

Reuse the primers -- unless there is obvious damage -- which I doubt -

[J-cat]

Is it a 556 chamber? If so, they are within spec.

[RayB]

Reuse them.

[repo4sale]

Put them in the tips of JHP 40SW 45ACP 44 10MM & 45GAPs = mini-shaped charge ammo!

[bruce381]

reuse? LOL for the 3-4 dollars they cost toss them and be assuerd of no dud or hang fires.

[Carcassonne]

I hand primed about 300 casing of 223 without trimming. Found out afterword that the trim length was a bit to long. The trimmer I have uses pilots so needs to be deprimed to trim. Yes I'm newer to reloading and should have checked before priming. Anyways, just deprimed all of them and trimmed and was able to recapture all the primers. Can I reuse those primers? Or do I scrap them and call it my $10 lesson learned? They look fine but thought I'd ask before making another possible mistake.

I reuse the primer when I have to remove them for some reason. Usually because they are in backwards.


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[SMarquez]

I did that with about 20 or so. They chucked up in my Forster case trimmer with no problem. The collett grips the case rim more than the base of the case so it was no big deal to use flush seated primers though mine are seated just below flush.

[ptmn]

Reuse the primers? Probably not the best idea...but that being said, I've done it a couple times.

So the primer formula is formed up at the base of your primer cup and hardens. If you reuse the decapped primer, it could cracked the hardened primer material and cause a misfire, hang fire, dud, or squib.

Probably not the smartest thing, and I make no claims for safety, but this is what I did: I made sure that I knew which batch of ammo had the reused primers in it. Then, I made sure that it was just standard target ammo, not tactical target ammo.

The difference between the two is that tactical target ammo is used utilizing rapid fire and double taps quite a bit. I didn't want to risk a squib or hang fire while doing rapid fire for obvious reasons. Instead, slow, steady target work, for the reused primer ammo, that way if there was a squib, I wouldn't actually fire the second round with a squib load bullet already in the barrel.

Maybe I was overkill, since all the reused primers fired the ammo just fine, but I wanted to be safe and I didn't want to ruin one of my guns.

[bohoki]

get the possum hollow trimmer and power adapter

leave them primers alone its like $10 of primers and $20 of labor

[Eljay]

I'd pitch them. It's a one time mistake, just eat your losses and move on and don't do it again.

[Grunt81]

Holy crap....YES...reuse the freaking primers...they will work, I promise. If you have a hand priming tool, just reprime some processed brass.

The only lesson learned..Trim your brass. Just because you've reloaded them twice, doesn't mean they are still in spec. It's not much trouble to trim, chamfer, deburr 50 cases before they go on your progressive.

Don't listen to the guys saying to dump the primers (smh ).

Like J-cat said, if your'e loading for a 5.56 chamber, you're good. If you're loading for a bolt action .223 chamber, I personally wouldn't be doing it on a progreesive press. Bolt-actions are meant to be precision weapons, AR-15s are combat weapons and need only to be minute-of-terrorist.

You did the right thing by getting our opinions, but good God, if the primers are not dented and still round, they will work. Just don't get complacent and trim your brass. If you don't feel like trimming brass, then buy factory ammo and reload for a caliber you feel like putting time in to.

JM2c

[natep4620]

Update
so I reused about 20 primers and all worked fine. So I'm gonna reuse the rest of them for simple target loads. One shot at a time so i will know if i get a dud. Not for rapid fire reloads. Thanks to everyone for your responses.