Tough to deprime hulls

[Stan Hillis]

I'm having a problem I've never encountered before. I am reloading some Cheddite .410 hulls that have been fired one time. They were bought new as primed hulls, loaded once, fired and now in the process of being reloaded.

Problem is, the spent primers are the hardest to punch out that I have ever encountered in 45 years of shotshell reloading. A MEC single stage press sounds like it's about to fly apart from the force needed to punch the old primer out.

I have a shell holder for my RCBS metallic press that fits the .410 heads, so I tried using it with a decapping die. The punch on it is so small in diameter that it punches the center out of the primer but leaves a "ring" stuck in place in the primer pocket.

Question: does anyone make a shotshell decapping die for a metallic cartridge press that has a decapping pin large enough to prevent the center from being punched out of the spent primers?

[CraigThompson]

Contact CH-4D they “might” have such an animal .

[Chuck Bishop]

Could be that the primer has partially rusted in base. We would see that on hulls that had gotten picked up for reloading. I used to have a MEC 12ga hydraulic that didn't have enough push to push out the primer.

[Stan Hillis]

No rust on these. Primed at the factory, picked up immediately after dove shooting was over.

I'll check them out Craig, thanks.

[David Noble]

I have a shell holder for my RCBS metallic press that fits the .410 heads, so I tried using it with a decapping die. The punch on it is so small in diameter that it punches the center out of the primer but leaves a "ring" stuck in place in the primer pocket.


Stan, make sure the RCBS shell holder has a hole large enough to allow the spent shotgun size primer to drop through.

[Stan Hillis]

Thanks for that tip, David. The hole is plenty big enough. Most of them fell out but some were stuck in the pocket so tightly that the little pin punched the center out of the primer and left the outer "rim" stuck in the pocket.

[Stan Hillis]

If I cannot find one for sale I may just have a machinist friend make me a larger diameter punch to go in my decapping die. That would solve it.

For those of you into metallurgy, would that be machined from oil-hardening or from water-hardening steel?

[matt koepnick]

I had similar experience with a flat of Rem GC 12 gauge hulls. They were all my own once fired hulls, and when inserted into first de-priming station, they would actually bow out the base until finally popping the primer out. lost quite a few hulls as they wont sit flat anymore..
My same guns firing all the shells, same press I used on all my shells. MEC 600.. No issues since that flat. I dunno..
Mattly

[Bill Murphy]

I have one or two PW 375s sitting idle that I use for such chores.

[Erich Bretschneider]

I have run into that with B&P High Pheasant hulls where the opening in the base wad was small and the decaping pin had to punch through the plastic first.

[Mike Koneski]

I never had that problem but some hulls are made where the primers are crimped into the base, sort of like how military rifle ammo is primed. That makes it a bugger to decap a shell. That could be done to help waterproof hunting shotshells?

[Keith Doty]

After recently buying a 410 SxS I have shot several hundred Cheditte 3" factory rounds, suffered the pains of getting one of my Pacific presses set up for it. I think I've had nearly any other issue you can have but that's not one of them. The old 266 punches primers out easily.
Experimenting with graphiteing some 7 1/2 shot this afternoon. Shot drop has been by far my issue.

[Stan Hillis]

I never had that problem but some hulls are made where the primers are crimped into the base, sort of like how military rifle ammo is primed. That makes it a bugger to decap a shell. That could be done to help waterproof hunting shotshells?

That doesn't seem to be the case with these, Mike. About 75% of them punch out like normal, but the others are unbelievably tight.

Thanks for all the ideas, fellas.