I have about 1,600 .223 cases that are now fire-formed to .223 AI. They were all purchased as loaded ammo (Fiocchi and Lake City), then reloaded and fired in my AI barrels. So I've loaded each one of these cases once already. Last night I started depriming them. Out of the first 40 cases, 4 of them had flash holes so off center that it yanked the decapping pin out of the die.

This is a new set of Redding dies. When I reloaded them as standard .223 ammo, I was using RCBS dies. The flash holes were just as off center the first time I loaded them, but I didn't have any issues losing my decapping pins. If I have to stop and pull a decapping pin out of a case every 10 cases, it will take me forever to get all of these resized. Any ideas besides starting over with better brass?

Decap in advance with a dedicated decapping die.

Wouldn't that be admitting that the Redding dies can't handle the situation? (On second thought, it probably would indicate that they are too perfect to be expected to deal with imperfection.)

Go back and fondle your cheap ass Lee dies.


(I use Lee collet dies and a Lee decapper. )

Fiocche are famous for that.

could be the flash holes are too small for that pin. Rick.

PMC had a lot of that years ago... I was running Redding even back then. Never an issue that I recall.

I"d check the hole size vs pin size too.. been known to have some small flash diameters.

I know the off center did nothing to hurt accuracy.

Looks like I need one of those Lee Decapping dies. Thanks for the suggestion!