swaging 223 brass

L

locknloader

New member
The directions for my hornady 223 swaging kit are a little sparse, basically it looks like its a guessing game to dial in the swage depth and they only give a picture of what a proper swage should look like.

Should i just be going by feel of how hard it is to seat a primer, and stay on the tighter side to make sure the primers are nice and tight in the pocket? I am guessing i want the least amount of swage possible for the longevity of the brass?

What are the risks of "over swaging"? Will the primer pocket be very loose and not hold the primer?

Trying to understand how critical it is to get the "perfect depth" of swage, or if i can just find a middle ground and roll with that without any major negative consequences.

Most of my brass is various years of lake city since i get once fired brass from an LE friend every time they qualify on rifle, but i do have some mixed in stuff from the range.

Not looking to set any records, just plink with AR from 25-100 yards.
 
Look closely at an un swaged deprimed primer pocket. What do you see? A burr sticker no up, right. Look at the swaging tool. It has a radius at the top of the pocket.

Pushing it in the primer pocket rolls that burr. No more, no less. Too much pushes that radius deeper and loosens the grasp on the primer a bit. Too little, and they hang up putting the primer in. You have to find balance. I find it hard to do way too much with this tool. As you get close, cam over gets hard.
 
Take a look at the crimp with a magnifying glass before and after you swage. It'll be easy to see the results once you set up the swager correctly.
 
If you want, you can take a Magic Marker and color the brass all around the primer pocket perimeter. You'll see the swager start to take it off. When it goes from a sharp edge to a slight flare you have usually done enough. But not always. With foreign made brass you sometimes need to run the swage all the way to the bottom as their metric specs can be slightly tighter than our inch system makes them. The difference is usually less than half a thousandth, but I bought some IMI 45 Auto Match brass one time that had such tight primer pockets that I couldn't seat primers into them on my Dillon press, and I had to go through swaging them all just to make them usable.
 
I ended up just feeling it out and seating a few to get an idea for the swage depth. I noticed that when barely applying the swage the cases tended to stick in the die, once i adjust slightly past that where all the cases where dropping from the swage die consistently that seemed to be just enough to allow the primer to seat but still be nice and tight like a 9mm case, similar feel when seating the primer i thought.

So, adjusting to just after where the cases drop from the swage die seems to be the "sweat spot" for lake city brass IMO.

There sure is a lot of prep work to loading 223 but i find the process has been much more enjoyable since the press runs super smooth since your never doing all 5 stations at once (at least not the way i am reloading them).
 
Good question. Here are some answers.

#1 Swaging brass is not generally not needed until you are dealing with military crimp that you want to properly resize. You would not generally swage fired brass that is not crimped, it is a waste of time. I would advise do not buy crimped brass. Total waste of time, not better, etc.
#2 Swaging does not make the brass wear out with loose primer pockets nec. faster. This is because the swager is a set dimension. If you put it in a primer pocket that is new, it will go in easily and nothing will happen, for example. test it out, you will see. The only way to shorten life of the brass using some variety of swager, is if you overdo it with pressure on one side, etc. Depends on what model you have. Most models go straight in and straight out, so this can't happen, and its more like a punch.

As you can see, its uses to remove crimps mainly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg_6jKvooWI

#3 IF you are concerned about wearing out primer pockets and want brass to last long, you want low charge loads, generally. Lower pressure loads. I might suggest using RAMSHOT TAC 24.0 grains in a 55 grain bullet at 2.250. Low pressure, accurate, hardly any wear on brass.

#4 In my experience, Neck tension is an equal issue to primer pockets wearing loose. The neck of the case gets softer. So what you can do to help this, is get a bushing for your full size resizing die that is BARELY the size needed to make neck small enough to apply tension to round to securely hold it. This helps a bit.

The truth is, if you don't buy crimped used brass, and you load lower PSI, you can go your entire life without swaging ANYTHING. Its not nec really.

Primer seating depth is vastly overrated, and it would only possibly matter if you were doing competitions for money at 100 yards benchrest. People shoot under 1 MOA with primer seating depths variable several thousands. People talk about it mattering, but where is the test to prove it without a reasonable doubt? I tested it a dozen times.
 
I grew tired of the guessing game, as well. ...But with the CH-4D tool, not the Hornady.

A relatively recent thread here put myself (as some other members) onto this tool: Ballistic Tools Primer Pocket Swage Gauge.

Worth every penny.

(The small pocket and large pocket versions are available separately, as are other combinations of their tools.)
 
9MMand223only said:
#1 Swaging brass is not generally not needed until you are dealing with military crimp
Click to expand...
locknloader in post 1 said:
Most of my brass is various years of lake city since i get once fired brass from an LE friend every time they qualify
Click to expand...
Lake City Ammunition Plant is military, so his brass is crimped brass. Getting it free like that makes it too attractive to pass on, but it does mean swaging out the crimp.


9MMand223only said:
#4 In my experience…The neck of the case gets softer.
Click to expand...

Necks become work hardened by expanding and resizing and have to be annealed periodically if we don't want them to eventually develop splits. Perhaps you are observing failure to grip bullets well and mistaking that for softening. In that case, it is actually the brass getting hard and springy so it springs back out toward its expanded size after coming out of a sizing die. Going to a bushing die saves your necks the extra working done by the over-resizing and expansion steps used in a standard die, so it takes a lot longer to work harden them. Eventually, though…
 
Never heard of it happening anywhere before. No idea what possible mechanism there would be, as softening brass requires re-ordering grains displaced by the working action and/or growing grain size, both of which require temperatures that are high enough and sustained long enough, which doesn't happen in a gun. Most curious. I wonder if the cases are some odd alloy? Lots of annealing machines on the market for brass going the other way, which is normal (YouTube has a blue million demos).
 
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