Removing Military Primers

Guys, maybe it's me, or semantics, but definitely not Southern Drawl, but "swage" means to move metal, that is, to CRIMP the primer in it's pocket.

A "swager", then, does not REMOVE the crimp.

Removing the military crimped-in primer should be no real problem, just takes a little more "oomph" to get the spent primer out. Cleaning away the remains of the military crimp is the problem; if you don't, the fresh, new primer will likely not enter the pocket, or will cock and become damaged.

Sometimes, it's no trouble at all. I have a bunch of 9mm brass with crimped primer pockets, marked 'ISC" I believe, and the new primers enter pretty easy without removing the crimp.

AKMan51 said:

I use a Lee universal decapping die and an RCBS primer pocket swage kit. It doesn't cut or remove any metal from the pocket. It forces or swages the crimp from the primer pocket so that the brass can be primed like commercial brass. This is more reliable then the Lyman primer pocket reamers which can remove too much brass resulting in loose primers.

Click to expand...

Now here is something sounding good. Never heard of a tool which swages the crimp out, but it sure makes sense. What drives the swage tool to expand away the crimp? Do you hit it, push it in the loading press, or what?