223 priming issues! Am I doing something wrong?

[savageboy23]

Buddy of mine bought some .223 brass from and range and asked if I would load some up. We had worked up a load prior to this purchase. We settled on 18.5 gr of imr 4198 for his tikka t3. While priming up cases I noticed a few went in harder. The primers took a lot of pressure to push in. Two primers actually got smashed. All the cases I had problems with were marked FC or PSD on the headstamp. Am I doing something wrong?

Picture of a few problem cases.


The case before sizing


What do these markings mean? It's lake city brass I Beleive.


Cases with wrecked primers

[HeadLever]

Your military cases have crimped primers. You'll need to remove the crimp by either swaging them out or by using your deburring tool to remove the crimp.

You can search on Youtube or the internet as there are several tools and methods available that will help you here.

[savageboy23]

Thanks HeadLever

[futuretrades]

HeadLever is correct about the military brass having a crimp on the primers. If you don't know this in advance, it can cause the problems I see in your photos. Also the brass pictured with a headstamp, FC, as far as I know, stands for Federal Cartridge Company. Lake City brass is normally stamped LC with a year stamp following the LC stamp. Looks like this: LC89. Means Lake City manufactured in 1989.

[Nor Cal Mikie]

Crimped in primers! Been there, done that and NOW, so have you. Now you'll know what to look for on your next batch of brass. Chamfer, deburing tool will take care of that.
Depends on how hard they were crimped. Might take a primer pocket swagger to get them right? One more thing to store in your memory bank.

[savageboy23]

Thanks for the help guys! I haven't gotten the time to finish up the rest of the rounds. But I have the problem and solution figured out.