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Speer 38 Special brass


Hollifer A. Dollar

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I was asked by a friend to load some 38 special ammo for him. He gave me 400 or so rounds of brass, mixed headstamps. I separated all the brass & found about 75 pieces of Speer brass. When I tried loading them, they were impossible to prime (Federal small pistol primers)! First 5 rounds, 4 would not prime at all & 1 did with reluctance. I deprimed them all, used my primer pocket reamer to put a little chamfer on the pockets, then tried again. Results were a little better, only 3 out of 5 primers refused to seat. After one primer went off when I tried to seat it, I took all that brass & put it in the recycle bucket. (I use a 550 so no damage other than me cussing a blue streak.) Started loading his other brass (Starline, Winchester & R-P) - it all primed smoothly & easily.

 

Has anyone else had this problem with Speer brass? A while back I ran into this with the Sellor & Belliot (S&B) stuff. Maybe Speer gets their brass from S&B?

 

Holler

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There was a fellow down Florida way that used to sell brass on the SASS Classifieds. He was rangemaster at a LEO range and collected the brass. I bought probably 8000 pieces of 38's from him over a two year period, probably half of it was Speer. No problem whatsoever, I use Winchester primers. Wish they'd let him sell more, but I reckon they considered it a commercial posting. <_<

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Some Speer brass have the primers crimped. Found that out the hard way, too. If you have a small primer pocket swager it takes care of the problem.

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I was asked by a friend to load some 38 special ammo for him. He gave me 400 or so rounds of brass, mixed headstamps. I separated all the brass & found about 75 pieces of Speer brass. When I tried loading them, they were impossible to prime (Federal small pistol primers)! First 5 rounds, 4 would not prime at all & 1 did with reluctance. I deprimed them all, used my primer pocket reamer to put a little chamfer on the pockets, then tried again. Results were a little better, only 3 out of 5 primers refused to seat. After one primer went off when I tried to seat it, I took all that brass & put it in the recycle bucket. (I use a 550 so no damage other than me cussing a blue streak.) Started loading his other brass (Starline, Winchester & R-P) - it all primed smoothly & easily.

 

Has anyone else had this problem with Speer brass? A while back I ran into this with the Sellor & Belliot (S& B) stuff. Maybe Speer gets their brass from S&B?

 

Holler

Maybe Speer put the S in S&B :D:lol:

 

I've had that problem before with some Speer and some S&B but not to the degree that you seemed to have experienced. It never occurred to me to use my small primer pocket swager to see if that would clear it up and make them useful....sounds like a good idea that I am going to try. When I run into those now I'm gonna set them aside and see if the swager can open it enough to work successfully.

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There was a fellow down Florida way that used to sell brass on the SASS Classifieds. He was rangemaster at a LEO range and collected the brass. I bought probably 8000 pieces of 38's from him over a two year period, probably half of it was Speer. No problem whatsoever, I use Winchester primers. Wish they'd let him sell more, but I reckon they considered it a commercial posting. <_<

 

 

Got a bunch from the same place.

 

Use only Federal primers. Never a problem.

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Some Speer brass have the primers crimped. Found that out the hard way, too. If you have a small primer pocket swager it takes care of the problem.

 

Sounds like the primers were crimped in

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Well, sort of. I got some just like Goody did. Had a tough time with Winchester primers when using a hand primer, but no problem with Federal primers.

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Sounds like they do make some with crimped primers. I am going to give the empty brass back with a recommendation to either find someone with a primer pocket swager or to toss them in the scrap metal bin. Thanks yall!

 

Holler

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