If bigger flash holes were better, don't you think after all these years, ammo manufacturers would have figured that out? I've never once had to drill out a flash hole. Ran into some rough burred ones and my torch tip cleaner fixes that right up. That's what I use to poke the stuck media out with and while I'm at it, also remove burrs. 2 birds with 1 stone. Nothing too complicated there.
I dug my Lyman's primer hole burr tool out and went through probably 700 cases in the last 2 days. All were 5.56 brass of some kind. Mostly Lake City. I did run my #45 drill bit through the primer hole prior to using the Lyman tool and found that most of the holes were very clean with clean smooth edges after being drilled. I really didn't need to do anything additional but I had the time and wanted to see just how many cases needed to be reamed from the inside.
The few I did find that were not clean with smooth edges were mostly the dated FC (Federal Cartridge) 5.56 brass. They had the roughest internal holes. I looked at them with my bore scope and could see that they were not very smooth even after running the #45 bit through the holes. It would of taken a much larger drill bit to clean them up as nice as the other 5.56 brass I cleaned up with the Lyman tool or by drilling them out.
It appears the options are:
I can make the primer holes uniform and get rid of the rough edges on the drill press or spend the time to clean them up with the Lyman tool by hand. All except for the FC 5.56 brass which seems to be an animal of it's own. The fastest way was to simply lift the primer hole up to the spinning drill bit on the press and run it through. Just that quick and it was done.
kwg
