Yesterday Rutilate was bitching at me about small primer pockets in some Lake City .223 brass; at first, per SOP, I just kinda tuned him out and waited for the complaining to subside. But then I got to thinking about it, and wondered if there might be a shred of credibility there, because I routinely find .223 very hard to prime properly on my press.

Let's start with this picture:



Per those specs, a small primer pocket should be 0.117-0.123" deep.

I measured a handful of .223 brass, some prepped by me and some prepped by others, and I found a number of them that were shallower than that. (Measured using the butt end of my calipers.) The military brass definitely seemed to be shallower than the commercial.

Now would be a good time to mention that I have a set of these primer pocket tools from Ballistic Tools, which allow me to confirm that the crimp has been properly removed, and they also give you a quick "eyeball" determination of whether the pocket is too deep or too shallow:



So this morning I took four pieces of once-fired Lake City brass, deprimed them, and started experimenting. I measured the depth of the primer pocket of each of them, measuring four times at each "corner" of the pocket. I then swaged each of them with my Dillon Super Swage 600, cranking the handle just enough to remove the crimp and allow the "go" gauge to enter. I measured the pocket depths again. Then I swaged the shit out of each of them, giving them the full swing of the handle on the Dillon, and measured the pocket depths again. Here are the results; when there is a range of measurements, it's because I got different reading in the four different locations of the pocket.

Before Swaging:
1: 0.117
2: 0.116-0.118
3: 0.120
4: 0.116

After "Just Enough" Swaging:
1: 0.116-0.118
2: 0.116-0.118
3: 0.119-0.122
4: 0.115-0.117

After "Swage The Shit Out Of It" Swaging:
1: 0.112-0.118
2: 0.112-0.116
3: 0.119-0.122
4: 0.113-0.118

Here's a pic of the Dillon swager; you slide the case over that long black "backing rod," then lower it down into the mechanism, and then the swager rod pushes into the primer pocket:



Here are my conclusions:

1) "Just enough" swaging didn't really affect the primer pocket depth.
2) Heavy swaging DID affect the primer pocket depth, and in a bad way. Three out of the four cases had very shallow areas, way below spec. It appears that the backing rod is pushing the web (bottom of the primer pocket) towards the case head.

My normal practice with the swager is to set it to swage fairly deep, since I've never been able to see any damage to the case. If a little is good, more must be better, right? I'm going to have to use a lighter touch going forward, though, and my primer pocket gauges will help with that.

I've ordered the large and small primer pocket correction tools (aka primer pocket uniformer) from K&M; we'll see if those will help, or if they're worth the effort:
https://kmshooting.com/product/small-pi ... tion-tool/

Any thoughts or experience with this?

I had a Dillon swaging tool like you did in 223 and 308 and it never really helped. If the primer does not go in easy, I put in a separate box to give away. Some makes are harder to prime, but some prime ok.

I'll add my 2 bits worth:

I've never had a problem with high primers before when I've swaged (or reamed) crimped .223 brass. But this batch of brass was awful. Someone else had done the swaging and out of 570 rounds loaded, I had 75 that had high primers--and probably more because I'd caught a large handful and smooshed them in the press before loading. That's 14%--waaaay too high of a reject rate and waaaay too much work! And primers are like gold-I can't afford to lose even one!

I conducted the same test that MadPick did and interestingly, found very minimal variation between pre- and post-swaging on my setup.
Here are the measurements:

It would appear that my primer pockets actually lengthened just a hair, from just under 1 thousandth to not quite 2 thousandths. That might be because the swage-it pushed some brass to the side and created a slight ridge at the mouth of the primer pocket, which moved the datum ever so slightly. If I cared enough I'd stone the faces and remeasure but.... I don't.

I'm using the Swage It on the Dillon 650:
https://swageit.com/swage-it-s650-version-2-combo/
It looks like this mounted on the press:


Based on conversations with MadPick, it sounds like the guide rod in the Dillon Super Swage might be pushing the floor of the primer pocket out towards the face of the case head, and inconsistent pressure may account for a 25% failure rate.

Now I have a fair ton of LC brass remaining and I'm not sure whether I want to load it!

Great data, thank you Curtis.



And just to spell it out . . . with the Swage It, the brass is held by the shell plate around the rim, not by a backing rod on the inside. I suspect that's the key difference here.

You guys have more issues then I have ever seen before.....

I have swaged 10,000's of LC brass and never had an issue.
And yes I use a Dillon Super Swage for all of them....

That's because you use those soft Federal primers that just crush into place....

Randy, how do you set up your Super Swage? Do you sort your brass by headstamp before you sort, and how do you adjust the swager?

I most certainly do sort by headstamp "brand" but not by date when it comes to LC or FC brass.

Nothing fancy on the set up.
I simply take a piece of brass and swage, test and re-adjust until it "feels" right when I seat the primer.
Once I have it where I think I like it, I run 2 or 3 more to verify and then get busy.

I never bought any of the "fancy" primer pocket gauges.
I am too old school.....Which isn't always a good thing.
I simply due what works for me.

And BTW......I have, in the past, loaded a bunch of just about every brand of primers....

I will say that the only brass that I will reload that was swaged by someone else is the stuff the Sage's Reloading preps.

One thing to keep in mind is that my Super Swage is probably 25 years old so I do not know if anything has changed in its design.

Keep in mind, I am just flipping you shit.

Thanks, Randy. Sorting by headstamp, and then adjusting the swager to just do enough to eliminate the crimp sounds like it would accomplish what I did with my "just enough" swaging.

My normal method has been to throw mixed brass through it, and swage the shit out it just to make sure I get them all . . . which in hindsight may not be the best approach.

I really wish I had some big fancy technical answer but alas I don't....

Interesting

I've never had that problem, but I'm using the press mounted RCBS swager. My guess is that the rods are dished on the ends so they press on the perimeter of the pocket instead of the center like the dillon does

Ah, very interesting.

I just want to hear more about Rutilate's complaining.

I Dillon does make the primer pocket look funny when there is a little sprue in the inside of the flash hole. I like how RCBS dishes that. Maybe I’ll do that to my Dillon.

I’ve used both options for swaging, the Dillon is the fastest by far but prefer the RCBS because I’ve not had any problems with it.