Neck Bites

[Jack Leslie]

My AR was dinging the ejecting shells and flattening the rim of my case necks and the decapping die that I was using was catching the rim and folding the neck rim down. Then when I would resize, the button would not be able to flatten the "bite" on the neck leaving a deformity. The two shells on the left of the photo are after sizing, the two on the right are before resizing but after decapping. The bite is too deep to trim away.

Attachment 20833

My question is should I:
A) ignore the neck bite and use the shells for match ammo as if nothing is wrong.
B) downgrade the shells to my mixed/range pickup brass pile for plinking ammo
C) pitch it into the recycle bucket

It worrys me from a safety perspective that the thicker neck might increase pressure, and from an accuracy perspective that the bullet would get a crooked jump into the barrel.

What to the more experienced reloaders think?

Thanks,
Jack

PS: I fixed the problem going forward by covering the bump on the AR receiver with the fuzzy side of Velcro to minimize the dinged rim flat spot, and reshaping the end of the decapping rod to more of a point. I still have these fifty shells to deal with, though.

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[Parashooter]

1. The "rim" is on the other end of the case. The part with which you're having problems is called the mouth. (The descriptive anatomy of a cartridge case is very strange. The "head" is below the"body" and, at the other end, the "neck" is surmounted by the "mouth". Go figure!)

2. The cases you've pictured are scrap! Not even worth plinking.

[Jack Leslie]

Parashooter:

Thanks, I guess I knew that they were scrap, but being cheap, I needed to hear it from someone else.

Thanks too, about correcting my nomenclature. In the heat of trying to clearly explain what happened I got all cocked up on the "body parts."

All the best,
Jack

[rider]

I insert the bullet tip of a loaded round into the deformed case mouth to restore its concentricity before attempting to insert the case into a die.
You could cut the case mouths back with a Lee case trimmer sans shell holder, but they probably would not provide adequate neck tension for most bullets. I'd scrap those cases and chalk it up to experience.

[gunner]

Hello Jack, they look like the cases from our Heckler&Koch G3. We spend the cases to an recycler. You can do it the way like raider said by using a long time for getting a bad result. I`ve tried it a time ago but it was wasting time.You get cases with different neck lenghts and each hit the target on a other point. The best is to scrap them like raider and parashooter said.

Regards

Gunner

[Jack Leslie]

It’s unanimous: I’ll scrap them.

rider: Thanks for the idea about using a bullet to reshape. I sort of backed into that method by reshaping the business end of my decapping die stem. It had been squared, which caused it to catch the mouth and fold it over, but I chucked it into a drill press and made it more bullet shaped. It works well enough for .223, but isn’t large enough for other calibers, so if that problem comes up in larger calibers I’ll use your bullet trick.

Trimming isn’t an option as I would lose too much neck tension. I’m not that cheap (maybe almost, but not quite).

gunner: Thanks for the advice. I figured that I wasn’t the first to have this problem. The cases are in the scrap bucket waiting to get donated to my club when they next sell their accumulated brass and lead to the scrap dealer.

All the best,
Jack

[rider]

If you ever reload for the M1 Garand, you'll encounter lots of dented case- mouths.

[Parashooter]

Mouth-damaged .223 cases can be shortened and formed to .222 Rem., .221 Fireball, 7.62x25, and several others sharing the same head size. Generally it's not worth the trouble when correct new brass is available at reasonable cost.

[Jack Leslie]

At this point I have sooo much CMP LC & HXP .30-06 that it will be a while before I need to reload for the M1. I do need to work up an accuracy load for them, but for general 100yd goofing off, I have plenty of M2 Ball (and once fired brass).

Jack