Primer Crimp Removal Tool Harbor Freight Junk Alert

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mikld,

Your link is fine because it takes you to the page where the seller has things he wants potential customers to see and where he can sell it to them.


The main drawback to the deep conical taper in Marco's first link, as opposed to removing brass at the surface with a tool that cuts and inside radius there, is just that it represents more removed brass volume. In the second, thumbnailed image, I don't think it does represent an appreciable volume difference. The case in the image from the first link is not likely to be an issue with moderate loads like a lot of the standard Garand loads with 4895 or 4064. Many actually run about 40,000 psi. Where I see potential for concern is with a load warm enough to start mushrooming primers. At that point the head having to inflate to fill the extra volume would stretch the side walls enough to incur some added risk of piercing.

Just musing: I note that I've missed removing crimps from a few cases over the years that I didn't discover until I was priming, and that some portion of the time I could seat a primer in them anyway, albeit a bit stiffly. That's because decapping has already pushed most of the crimp out of the way. I'm thinking an interesting experiment would be to try just chucking a slotted round head screw in a drill and applying that to burnish the primer pocket edges without any more cutting than the slot does and see if that's enough to get primers to reliably seat.
 
Guffey and others think the countersink removes brass that holds the primer in. I think that is an erroneous assumption.
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Marco Califo, I said I made tools for crimping primers, I said I told my friend at the gun show I have never seen cases that were uglier than his cases that had been tapered and or beveled around the primer pocket, I even went so far as to say I have experience with core hole plugs, freeze plugs and welch plugs. After the top of the primer pocket hole has been tapered and or beveled there is no way I can crimp the primer. .

I believe tapering the top of the hole is a bad habit. I do not do it.

A smith called and said he had a bunch of things he wanted to give me, a few of the pieces were like the primer pocket swage mentioned by Mehavey, I explained to him what they were and I told him why he was given them away. All of the anvils were bent and or crushed because reloader do not measure the thickness of the case head, Adjusting the anvil to swage the primer pocket on a thin headed case will result in a bent anvil when used on as thick headed case. And then there were the BAR RCBS dies, I explained to him the BAR dies were small base dies and he kept the BAR dies and ordered replacement anvils for the swage die.

F. Guffey
 
I'm thinking an interesting experiment would be to try just chucking a slotted round head screw in a drill and applying that to burnish the primer pocket edges without any more cutting than the slot does and see if that's enough to get primers to reliably seat.
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Back in the '50s Hatcher said he simply used his pocket knife. Again, I started on 3,500 cases I purchases for as little as $14.00 for 1,400 cases, a lot of those cases still have the primer; how else could I convince someone the cases are once fired or never fired.

F. Guffey
 
Marco Califo said:
I am sticking with the $8 sharp bit in a drill.
And I think I can do 1000 in 90 minutes.
That's 5 seconds each:
2 seconds picking up
1 second in the drill
2 seconds putting down.

I have heard that the Dillion is the best swager. But rather than push the brass around, I prefer to remove the interfering brass, and bevelling nicely.
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Do you really time yourself to find out how long a process take's? Anyone else do that?
 
Don Fisher, I seriously do count the drill "run" as "one-one-thousand": Stop. I admit the two second pick up and put down times are estimates. Those two steps include quick looks for How bad is it? and Did I cut enough?. Personally, I am concerned with quality, and no, I do not try to beat the clock. If I have 2 or 5 hundred or a thousand, I do not calculated a budgeted time try to meet it.
The point I was trying to make is that it is not a slower process than swaging.
 
I'm thinking an interesting experiment would be to try just chucking a slotted round head screw in a drill and applying that to burnish the primer pocket edges without any more cutting than the slot does and see if that's enough to get primers to reliably seat.
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UncleNick, I am thinking you mean a philips head screw driver bit. If so, I have done that. It works, it takes longer. I have tried pocket knives and flat head screw drivers too, with passable results (but no benefits) Judicial use of a counter sink is faster, and with practice, the cutting can be far, far, less than the picture I recycled from when I first started using the counter sink bit. On average I use one quarter to one half as much cutting. That is an interesting point about mushrooming, I will watch for it in the future.
 
mehavey, I have one of those RCBS set-ups. I hated it and abandoned its use. I found it did not produce consistently acceptable results and needed to be adjusted for each case maker. IMO the drill works and gives immediate visible feedback of how you did.
But by all means, do what you want to.
 
Marco,

What I had in mind was that using a roundhead screw as a poor man's muzzle lap is an old idea, and Lee makes its chamfering/deburring tool with just a slot as the cutting edge, so I thought a round head might work. May need to be at least case-hardened to keep the "edge" up, though. The question is whether you really need to remove the crimp brass or just burnish it. The swagers don't remove it, but they do push pretty hard.

I think RCBS improved the press mounted swaging tool at some point not too awfully long ago. They used to get some complaints about bending. So if yours was older, then maybe they are better now. I've never tried one, as I bought the Dillon tool circa 1990.
 
I think RCBS improved the press mounted swaging tool at some point not too awfully long ago.
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When I was a kid we used a double shovel, it had spring release when we hit a stump or the top of a 2,000 pound rock. I could never figure why RCBS did not determine the release point on a spring when swaging primer pockets. They designed it to swage or bend.

F. Guffey

Anyhow, I measured case head thickness, I found .060" difference in case head thicknesses. Yes, I sorted but that did not stop other reloaders from bending 'their' pins:):eek:;)

F. Guffey
 
FWIW, I have never had to adjust my Dillon swager for different case head thickness or any other reason, I took the unit out of the box and have done thousands of rounds of range brass without any problems whatever. There is no need to run the swage all the way to the bottom of the primer pocket. It only needs to touch the crimped portion and push it out of the way.
 
Interesting thread. Too bad I didn't see it earlier.
Anyway, at the risk of getting it somewhat back on topic ( ;) ), I'm gonna tell you guys my experience with Harbor Freight.

I knew of its existence through a customer of mine, back in 2003 or 2004. Started buying some cheap stuff, to try it out, and soon enough I was visiting the store 3 times a week, sometimes 4.
I ended having over $8000 in HF stuff, including hand tools, electric, battery powered, pneumatic, you name it. I had a full mechanics, carpentry, metalworking, electricity, and paint shop, from a few hammers, to a metal lathe, bench drill, mig welder, several paint guns, air compressor, air hammers (they were dirt cheap, and I kept forgetting I had bought them already, so I ended up with 4 of them), and a very long list of etceteras.
Only once I had a problem with one of their tools: I used an air hammer to clean up a water pump head that was caked up with more than 1/2" of calcium deposits everywhere, and the return spring broke. Went to the store and they gave me a new spring, no questions asked, and, since they had to take the spring off a brand new air hammer, they also gave me the 5 chisels that came with it.

So, @ OP: sorry you had a bad experience with HF, but, at least in MY experience, they sell anything but junk. I only wish they opened a store here in Buenos Aires... :rolleyes:
 
I have been going to HF for about 15 years. I still go there, but less and less. They don't really sell junk. Whatever they sell, they copy it from somebody. They problem is they haven't done a good job copying, although they are improving. Their stuff works but just not good enough. I ended up spending time to improve the tool to make it work good better. Most of the time I have to give up and buy the the real one. I spend more money and time. The worst part is now I have to beg people to take over the cheap tool. They are reluctant to accept the gift even it is free. Somehow the cheap tool turns into liability.

-TL

Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk
 
Harbor Freight buys from jobbers and some stores buy from the same jobber.
Look at the engine hoist that Sears sells and then look at Harbor Freight - same exact tool.
You can find other places that sell the same drill presses and socket sets that are sold at Harbor Freight for less. At least Harbor Freight allows you a 30 day guarantee.
If you buy a complete set of screwdrivers for $5.98 and then complain about it being junk, well that's on you.
 
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