How a machinist preps rifle brass

[Nickb]

I recently bought 2000 pieces of .223 brass, to add to my 2000 or so pieces I had sitting in a bucket. I sized/deprimed all of them last weekend, normal stuff on the rock chucker.
Then I realized about 2500 pieces were F.C .223 rem brass with a primer pocket crimp. So I headed down to my shop and put a case mouth debur tool in the spindle on the manual mill, got thru those in about 2.5 hours (I have been removing crimps this way for a while and never had a problem).

Today I got to thinking about trimming all of them and how it didn't sound like a fun job on the Hornady cam lock manual trimmer. So I took the trimmer apart, put the piece that holds the shell holder in a collet closer and the cutter in the spindle, set a stop, grabbed a stool and a couple plastic bins and went to town on it.

Here's a few pictures
I use a drop indicator to check length, it's set at 1.75 for 0 so I can drop the indicator on the shell and see if it needs to be trimmer and check my trimmer cases without measuring them with a set of calipers.


Here is my set up to trim them.



I just wish I had an rcbs 3 way trimmer so I dont have to debur these when I'm done.

Next I will put a primer pocket brush in the spindle and clean the pocket in the mill as well. No bad wrists for this guy.

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[Blitzkrieg]

If they are once fired non machine gun rounds (IE low SD after sizing) I never worry about OAL until at least 2x reloads.. I get 1 MOA out of my heavy barrel and ultra match AR15s with surp SS109/M855 bullets. Hand weighing charges is IMO the key, along with sticking with one make of brass. Weighing brass into lots is another way if you are not getting the accuracy you need

I use a cordless drill to ream out primer pockets, RCBS bench trimmer when it comes to trimming to OAL, cordless drill to clean up after

 

[Nickb]

I've never had an accuracy issue, I have just always trimmed my brass. I always batch them by headstamp.

Most of the brass was FC, only about 50 of those needed trimmed. All of the RP and PMC brass has needed trimmed. Not to mention the 5.56 brass I have.

I usually don't have more than a hundred or so at a time... Until a month or so ago when I bought an AR.

 

[Velzey]

I see your worried about your vice moving with all that heavy duty milling...

 

[Nickb]

I see your worried about your vice moving with all that heavy duty milling...

We use the mill to bend a few parts. There's never any heavy milling on this machine... That's what the two cnc's are for.

 

[Blitzkrieg]

I do large batches.. just cleaned another 1K of LC that came in and now have about 5K of it, as soon as I can locate another 2-3K I can do my next project

 

[cookie]

no matter what I shoot the target always looks like I used a shotgun. I am way past trying to search for accuracy!.