I am fairly new to reloading center fire cases.

I have found that a deburing tool is a must .
after deburing the outside case, I also give a few quik turns on the inside of the case.
this makes it so much nicer to while setting the bullets.

I learned real fast to start doing this, after seeing the first one or two cases shaving off a little of the copper bullets.

I ended up pulling the bullets and reeming out the case just a little with the deburing tool, this elimiated the shaving of the copper , or lead bullets while setting them.

Are you loading rifle or handgun or?
Trimming is also important. When all of your brass is trimmed to the same length, your crimps will be more uniform and consequently ignition will be more uniform thus more accurate loadings.
I use a 14° Very Low Drag chamfer tool on all my brass whether for rifle or handgun. Seating force is reduced which greatly reduces any distortion of the bullet in the area where the seater makes contact with the bullet. Bullet "shaving " just doesn't happen. The standard chamfer tool is close to 45° which is fine for outside case deburring. And if thats what you have its definately better than not chamfering. You are on the right track.
Good Shootin

ripper007 wrote:

I learned real fast to start doing this, after seeing the first one or two cases shaving off a little of the copper bullets.

Taking a shaving off the bullet is bad enough, but what I hated seeing was a small section of the neck start to peel down, effectively trashing the case and bullet.
Didn't take me long to buy a chamfering tool when that started happening.

I don't believe that simply chamfering is sufficient when loading cast bullets, unless they are gas checked. For plain base cast bullets you must put a slight "bell" on the cast mouth to ensure clean seating of the cast bullet.

Cheers, Vince

Vince, you got it right. Open that case mouth.

ripper007, I make sure the cases are trimmed to spec, deburring, in my opnion, shortens the useful life of a case, too much metal being removed. Deburring is one area I've stayed away from and simply open the case mouth enough to accept the bullet during seating & crimping. Maybe I'm the only one that thinks that way, if so, I'll hear it here
Keep it coming...

I say this a lot so forgive me for restating it…
I believe in case prep...During the prep work I
• Size
• Trim to Uniform Length (This is a safty issue for rifles)
o Deburr & Chamfer
• Uniform Primer Pockets
• Deburr Flash holes
• Uniform Neck Thickness
• Tumble (Clean)
• Weigh & sort into .5 gr lots

Lots of people skip a lot od steps but you gotta trim... and if you trim you must Deburr & Chamfer Case mouths

yes, I do trim .

it is extreemly important for me to make the 30-30 shell the exact same size. I am thinking about buying a lee 30-30 die, it should have the crimp die with the set.

I am useing a rcbs 30-30 die set. it does a good job, but every thing has to be exact.

Thanks for the information, gladd to read every ones thoughts.

Lyman offer(ed) the M die for cast bullets. Instead of flaring or belling the mouth, it added a slight uniform expansion to the mouth that allowed the cast bullet to seat initially within the case mouth using mere hand pressure. The press finished the seating or seating/crimping without shaving the cast bullet. Nifty. I have one for 45-70, 338WM, 06 and 270.

Interestingly my RCBS 45-70 expander die does the identical thing. It doesn't flare the mouth, just slightly expands it. Its useful for cast or jacketed.

temmi: I like your case prep approach and use many of the same techniques. Its laborious but if makes me feel better when I do it. More recently I've been buying Nosler brass where possible as most of that work has been done and its worth the extra cost for me.

Re: deburring. my observation is that many reloaders overdo the process resulting in almost a knife edge on the mouth. After trimming, all I am trying to do is create a slight bevel on the inside/outside of the mouth. There is a slight radius on the heel of the bullet that should preclude shaving of the jacket. I had jacket shaving with one brand of dies in two calibers only to find the sizing die was resizing way too tight.

all the cases still have good landings after deburing. I did make sure I did not get carried away with takeing too much brass off the out side and inside.

I did forget about the resizing die, maybe if I tried setting it up so that maybe it will expand the case . I know I did this for my 30-30 cases , and it worked very good, I did not have to use the deburing tool for the inside , just the out side.

what method do you guys use for 5.56 nato 223 cases, for fixing the primer hole. there is a small ring , I think the military used for crimping the primers in. after punching the primers out for the first time, a new primer will not fit.
the local gun smith let me use a resizing die to runn all the cases threw, it resized the primer hole , allowing for installing new primers.

later I found out that the deburing tool will do the same thing, just shave off the crimping lip. I have not done this yet, but I do have some more5.56 nato 223 bullets to shoot, so I will have to do it again soon.

See my post in this thread above for 223.
And I chamfer out the primer swage like you did.

So far as I know there are 3 of the inside/outside neck deburring tools, RCBS, Redding and Forster. I fid they will stay sharp a very long time unless you try to deburr nickel cases which will dull the cutting edges in a hurry. Best wishes.

Cal - Montreal