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So, I loaded up some bullets that are no good out of one of my rifles. I was thinking of cutting my losses on the projectiles and pulling the bullets. Question is in order to reuse the brass which has been crimped with a Lee factory crimped die, what do I need to do to the brass to reuse it? My main concern is neck tension and being able to seat the bullet as they are crimped. Suggestions are welcomed and appreciated.
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I’ve done that before & I reused all of it, brass, powder, & bullets.
Pull the bullets, dump the powder out, remove the decapping pin on the sizing die (if it has one) and resize as normal.
*I’ve even left the pin in & deprimed live primers, but the internet tends to freak out over that. Just go slow if you do.
If the bullets are heavily deformed, you might want to just reuse them in blaster ammo but I’d definitely reuse them.
Thank you for the reply, looks like I will be decapping primers as the expander ball and decapper are all one peice. I don't imtend to resuse the bullets as they would keyhole at 10 yards out of my 1/7 barrel but run fine In my 1/8 barrel. Might be pushing them to fast but its the exact load I use for Hornady 55gr fmj I've had great success with. It is under book max. Here is a pic of a 10 yards target bigger holes are my crappy pistol shooting all other holes are from the load I want to pull.
Damage on bullet is from pliers because I couldn't find my bullet puller collet.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...cb3352fcd8.jpg
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I just did 100 rounds this Saturday. Simply pulled the bullets, dumped the powder back into the hopper, and recharged/reseated and recrimped the loads with the correct charge. I have a dedicated press for pulling .223 bullets so I don't have to set up that die in my main single stage. There should be no need to do anything with the crimp assuming it's not a super deep crimp. The bullet pulling out should remove it.
No way do you want to run that expander ball in the brass again. That thing is mean to brass necks.
I got them all done, I remembered I had an extra expander/decapping pin and cut the decapping pin off. Just re ran my brass as usual and reloaded them with bullets that don't keyhole. Good advise about the expander ball, i probably could have saved some time. On the upside most of this brass will be left behind in local matches. Only idiot thing I did really was tumble the lube off after running it through size die and lost about 5 primers due to media stuck in the flash hole. They were decapped without issue. Lessons learned.
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I've reloaded thousands of .223 rounds with no neck expanding. Just seat the bullet back in there and recrimp. I make home D ammo this way so I can have virgin brass with crimped primers.
Iraqgunz gave me a huge batch of Israeli ammo that was sketchy as hell. I pulled it all down and reused everything.
edit: double post.