Home Forums Reloading Varmint Rifles primer pockets

I kept hearing about how you have to clean your brass to save your dies from being worn and scratched. Kept reading about how you have to clean primer pockets to get the finest accuracy and have your primers go bang.

Since I'm apparently a natural skeptic, I decided to test both claims. Have down been using several sets of dies for well over a decade to size unpolished brass, and the dies keep working fine. Have never found any difference in accuracy between cleaned and uncleaned primer pockets, even in some smaller-bore rifles that average 5 shots in less than 1/2" at 100 yards (including a couple that average under 1/4"), and several big game rifles that group three shots into less than two inches at 300 yards.

So I quit doing both, allowing me to get more handloading done.

Same here. Although I'm sure my testing was far less scientific than yours.

Thinking about this now my .17 Remington dies were bought 23 years ago and have never seen a tumbled round. And I bought 'em used.



Travis

I do this exact thing. I like pretty ammo. The boom is more harmonic.

"The boom is more harmonic." Nice phrase!

Thanks, John! Quite a compliment from a highly accomplished phrase-turner.

That WAS really good. Thankfully, I'd swallowed my coffee already. Harmonic boom. Geeze.


Cleaning is a "feel good" sort of deal. If it bothers you, do it. If not, don't.
I'd decided the only time I'll clean pockets is if they are getting too gross, (like once every five years) and what I do there is mix up a wet batch with first some kind of industrial solvent and some fine steel shot I got somewhere a long time ago.
The decapped cases go in the soup for a couple hours. Then I pour off the solvent and go for a couple of spins in hot Dawn for about an hour a pop. One more hot rinse spin and then the cases go in the warm oven, and finally, a dry tumble in media. I pour out the liquids through a screen coffee filter at each point, that captures the vast majority of the shot for use later. It's about two cupfuls, and I've not lost much, if any.

That's less of a pain than hand-cleaning the pockets, but it's such a pain, I only do it on certain big batches of brass I shoot quite a lot.

It also doesn't hurt to tumble unsized cases, then size and decap them, and tumble again. That seems to do a pretty good job of keeping the pocket gunk under control.

You're supposed to clean them?

I clean a primer pocket with a twist of a carbide cutter. No big fuss.

Well, if it makes your booms more harmonic, it's all good.