45 colt primers separating when depriming

Does look like they might have corroded into place. Bit of damp plus the nasty stuff from the spent primers themselves.
 
Google "reloading ringers". Usually caused by moisture. Happens to me when I pick up range brass that's been there awhile. They should pry out fairly easily.
 
I'm betting that the ground was wet (snow is the worst) the days you were shooting and the brass was just dumped in a can for the duration until now. I have had a bunch of .38 sp do that after the wife shot a cowboy match in the rain. There is no easy way to get those rings out without a possibility of damaging the primer pockets on some of them. I even used a small bench lathe to turn the brass and found a twist drill bit that just gripped the ring enough to peel it out . It worked to a point but even with the lathe accuracy, it chewed into 1/2 the brass. I did try prying them out as well with a ground sharp very small screw driver but had just as many damaged brass & more bleeding fingers. That primer casing isn't very thick but the curvature of it requires a bit more exertion to fold into itself than I would have thought.
 
I wonder if center punching the spent primers before removal would prevent this from happening?
Bit of a chore, but free brass is just that.
 
Hunt&Hook said:
Google "reloading ringers". Usually caused by moisture. Happens to me when I pick up range brass that's been there awhile. They should pry out fairly easily.
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You would think they would come out easily but they don't. Seems that once there is a bit of corrosion it really locks them in place. Also, the brass primer cup is extremely tough and it's very difficult to bend it away from the primer pocket to remove it. A friend of mine wet tumbled some 38 Special brass with the primers in and lost a bunch of them to locked in 'ringers'.
 
I get that too. Typically two or three out of around 500. I've never tried to clean out the ring. I figured that if it is tight enough to let the crown snap off then it's tight enough that I'm not going to mess with it. Into the trash they go.

If you're extra keen and have a drill press you could try drilling them out where you run in a drill a few thou less in size to the pocket and set the stop really carefully so it doesn't drill into the casing at all. But for what they cost it's not worth it.

If you are getting a lot more of them per 500'ish than I get you may want to look at decapping within a few days after using them so they are stored until cleaning and reloading without the primers in them. Although I'm not sure it's time on the shelf that bothers them. I have enough brass in some sizes that fired brass sits for quite a while before being reloaded. And I've been doing some .45acp that sat in a bucket for easily 7 years before I got it. And another two years with me. And it's decapping just fine. I've done around 400 of them over the last couple of weeks and not a single separated primer like this. So I don't think it's time sitting idle after being shot. It's something else.

Personally I blame nargles……
 
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