Grungy 45acp primed cases....what to do?

hatman1793

hatman1793

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My bullet puller & I took apart about 200 reloaded 45acp cases. These cases sat mostly undisturbed for at least 15 years. As such the cases are all grungy, are in various states of....you know what I mean.
The bullets are all re-meltable. Re-cast able. This leaves the empty cases with live, re-usable large pistol primers.
I am very reluctant to put these dirty, grungy cases in my sizer. If I tumble the brass, the media will contaminate the primers. About 200 reload able cases when clean, @ .10-.12 cents each, and the primers are worth a nickel each. About $32.00 in raw materials....

Got any suggestions?
 
What do you mean by grungy?

Unless there's a fair amount of corrosion and green or blue crap I would just load them up. Give them a good cleaning next time around.
Or you can get some steel wool or scotch bright pads and go to town until your fingers bleed. A Lee case trimmer collet thing that fits in a drill would speed it up.
 
These cases are not corroded or green, but have attracted an overall layer of age-related grunge for want of a better description.

Steel-wooing is too much work. Just running them through my sizer as is might permanently scratch it. Perhaps offer them to a more courageous owner? There's $32.00 worth of value here. What's the sale price?
 
Resizing won't hurt anything, though you shouldn't need to. Brass oxides are not in any way shape or form harder than the carbide ring in your sizing die. However, you might damage the primers and waste them anyway, and that is a good reason not to resize.

Tumbling them as is will not hurt the primers. the media is too large to go through the flash hole. I had a bit of a flood in the basement a couple years ago and a couple boxes of primers got submerged in water. I pulled them out and set them on a shelf. Found them 6 months later dried out and figured , I wonder if they'll still work? Turns out, yes, they did. Maybe a piece of media will get stuck inside a flash hole here and there, but you should be visually inspecting your brass anyway so that is not a big deal.
 
VinnyQC said:
1-Make a nice camp fire;
2-Throw the primed cases into fire;
3-Enjoy spectacle;
4-You can now deprime the cases.
Click to expand...

Not to besmirch VinnyQC, however, please do not throw them in a fire, or if you do, do not reload them as it will soften the whole case and make it unsafe to use. As long as it is not corrosion that protrudes from the surface load them up as practice ammo and away you go.
 
I have been reloading for over 47 years and have pushed hundreds of live primers out without any going off, but your safety is up to you.

I had to deprime 100 .223 cases the last time and used a universal depriming die. These type dies are wide open and will vent any pressure if the primer lets go.

As long as you go "SLOW" the primer will push out as easy as they went in. These cases were for my AR15 carbine and I even reused the primers.

You can also shoot the cases and get your pistol all dirty and make a lot of noise and then have to clean it. :stirthepot2:

Bottom line, its up to you and how safe you feel removing the primers, brass and primers are expendable items.
 
Yeah, no worries, push the primers out with a universal decapping die, wear safety glasses and go a little slower than you would if you were priming cases. It takes a fairly sharp crack to set most primers off in my experience.
 
Thank you for your solutions. However, investing in a universal recapping die is not cost effective. Depriiming all my other "clean" cases is easily accomplished. Just loading them will not accomplish my re-harvesting the LPP's for 44Spl.

I would be quite happy selling these grungy cases to in interested party for him to reload. It's not worth taking a chance soiling my 45acp sizer for such a small quantity. I might chance the tumbler idea.....
 
Safest way to deal with this is, as bigedp51 said, to put them in your pistol as is (i.e. no powder or bullet) and just shoot them. You will have to clean your pistol afterwards, but you will have brass that you can deal with safely.
 
BlackSheepBrass said:
Not to besmirch VinnyQC, however, please do not throw them in a fire, or if you do, do not reload them as it will soften the whole case and make it unsafe to use. As long as it is not corrosion that protrudes from the surface load them up as practice ammo and away you go.
Click to expand...

I suspect VinnyQC was making a joke.

The simplest way to handle this would be to shoot them as they were. Unless there is something weird going on, simple discolouration or darkening of brass from age is not something to worry about.
 
As others have pointed out - why do you feel the need to size them again?

Drop a random sampling of them into your barrel, and I bet they fit fine.

If they somehow weren't sized previously before loading, no amount of crimp would have kept the bullets from either spinning or getting pushed into the cases.

Flare, charge, seat, shoot - as has been advised.

I've noticed there are guys on this forum who seem to have an almost religious fixation for polishing their brass, as opposed to it just being functionally clean.

Clean means not encrusted with loose dirt/carbon, old grease, or patches of corrosion. More than that and you're just making it pretty to be pretty.
 
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