Decap and load without resizing ?

[apeks]

a little advice

New to reloading, as a qualifier. I read a lot and found that it might make sense to remove primers from brass prior to tumbling. I had some dirty brass 45acp, and bought a lee decapping die and a hand held press. It worked really well. I tumbled the brass and now I am ready to reload. I have a Lee turret press. I was also planning to hand prime (lyman hand primer tool). So does it make sense to size, then hand prime and then return to the press to load powder, bullet and then crimp? Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[jetinteriorguy]

On my Lee turret, I deprime, tumble clean, and then prime off the press for pistol stuff. I currently only load .41 mag on the turret of my handgun calibers. Then I just size on the press with the decapping pin removed from the sizing die. So my 4 hole is set up like this, 1-size,2-flare and add powder from drum measure,3-seat bullets,4-crimp with collet crimp die. For rifle I deprime, clean, size, clean sizing lube off, trim, and prime off the press. Then on the press,1-drop powder,2-powder check die,3-seat bullet, and 4-crimp with collet crimp die. I load all my 9mm, .38sp, and .357mag on my Load master. I do deprime and clean all brass off the press still since I've had some primers leave a part of the primer ring intact and cause a primer to detonate two times on the progressive. This scared the crap out of me, and since I can't detect this when depriming on the press in order to prevent an accident I'm just depriming off the press for my own peace of mind. It's weird though, I've easily loaded over 10000 rounds on the Loadmaster since getting it without any incident, then two days in a row I had this happen with a primer detonating.

 

[briandg]

Apex, of course it makes sense.

There are several things that are optional as to which order you follow.

You must decapitate and size prior to priming. You must put powder in before the bullet. Everything else, I guess, is up to you.

 

[zeke]

Because you decap while resizing at the same time, not resizing doesn't save any time unless you are using steel dies and lubing. It does save effort, especially if you have larger chambers. Adjusting your relation to the press height can also save you a lot of effort, by maximizing leverage.

Yes you can neck size pistol brass. Used to do this for older ruger 45 lc's, where the chamber size was excessive.

Yes you can bell rifle brass. By using a lyman belling kit with the next smaller diameter, you can bell without re expanding the case neck for some cartridges. This an be particularly handy when seating some flat base bullets straight without a comp seating die.

If you have once fired brass that used jacketed bullets, and then using larger dia lead bullets, you may try and get away without sizing the brass. Might depend on the particular brass, bullet and intended use of the cartridge (very low powered target, or higher powered load.

There's always exceptions and things people just never tried.

Personally would just size/decap the brass in one step.