De capping question

Kazman1960 said:
Is there a safe way to de cap a casing that still has a live primer in it ( no powder or bullet :) ) ?
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I use a manual depriming tool (the Harvey deprimer) and just gently squeeze the primer out. Never had one fire (knock wood that I didn't just jinx myself).

I would be careful using a decapping die and press and proceed very slowly, keeping in mind that the primer fires when struck quickly with sufficient energy.

Otherwise, if it's just a few cases, bring them to the range and fire the primers off, or simply discard.
 
It’s not recommended, but wear safety glasses and gloves if you’re really scared, decap slow and gentle with your decapping die, don’t slam into it. I did close to 100 rounds a few weeks ago with no trouble. Put the primers in a ziploc with some used motor oil I had in the garage to deactivate them.
 
I recently popped out somewhere around 6,000 live primers. Everything from small pistol to large rifle. Not a single one went off and I had little care for how gentle I was. Even if it goes off it is just a primer...
 
I use a universal decapping die that would allow the pressure to be vented out the bottom of the die.

Below the universal decapping die is wide open and would allow the primer to vent out the bottom of the die. And if you use a standard resizing die the pressure would be contained inside the die. That being said in over 48 years of reloading I have never set a live primer off removing it from the case.

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I have deprimed literally hundreds of cases and never yet had one go boom.
Use a universal decapping die and just push them out. My CO-AX has a primer
catcher. As one poster already stated, I re-use them in plinking loads. Dave.
 
Hard to deactivate primers, try the oil myths for yourself sometime.

Primers go boom from both directions btw.

Just about impossible to get enough ram speed on a press for setting one off, this can also be tested fairly easily.
 
Don’t ever put a bunch of primers together in a can or whatever. They come separated in their packaging for a reason. Don’t count on soaking then in oil, water etc to neutralize them.
I would just shoot them in the backyard, if you have one. The reports would not annoy your neighbours much.
 
I've decapped plenty of live primers with a Lee decapping die. It's a really hard process to screw up. Oil, water, wd-40 etc is not necessary and may not even be beneficial especially since they're still useable. Like most others I save them for plinking loads.
 
Lots of good advice. Go slow and do it on your big press. A big lever with lots of travel gives you the best feel and sensitivity to ease that primer out.
 
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