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How many live rounds have you resized..?

HALODIN wrote:the die would probably turn in to a grenade if pressure from resizing the case set the primer off

How so? As soon as the bullet plops out there's no containment.

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Upwards of 10,000. The die cannot be a grenade---there is no de-capping pin in it. I de-cap all calibres separately with a Lee universal de-capping die, which I have had to machine out to take some of the larger cases. The worst that can happen is a hole in the ceiling. Why should the primer go off? It is designed to ignite when the compound is crushed dynamically against the anvil, and no such mechanism exists in the reloading cycle other than when seating the primer---I would not recommend priming a loaded round.
When I went round Radway Green as a boy, I saw 303 amo beng loaded with cordite. Rather than struggle to get the strings of cordite into the case, the neck was formed after the primed case was filled. The bullet was seated and the final operation was sizing and crimping which appeared to be one operation.
Fred

I'm the least experienced person on this thread, but it seems to me the propellant would expand in all directions at the same time. So I guess it would return to atmospheric pressure pretty quickly, but we're still talking about [50|60],000 psi, I wouldn't want to be around that sort of pressure.

rox wrote:How so? As soon as the bullet plops out there's no containment.

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My concern was lateral pressure exerted on the primer from resizing could cause detonation. I guess you've got 10,000 examples that proves the odds are pretty low. I've never heard of anyone doing this before, so it's a bit of a shock!

FredB wrote:Upwards of 10,000. The die cannot be a grenade---there is no de-capping pin in it. I de-cap all calibres separately with a Lee universal de-capping die, which I have had to machine out to take some of the larger cases. The worst that can happen is a hole in the ceiling. Why should the primer go off? It is designed to ignite when the compound is crushed dynamically against the anvil, and no such mechanism exists in the reloading cycle other than when seating the primer---I would not recommend priming a loaded round.
When I went round Radway Green as a boy, I saw 303 amo beng loaded with cordite. Rather than struggle to get the strings of cordite into the case, the neck was formed after the primed case was filled. The bullet was seated and the final operation was sizing and crimping which appeared to be one operation.
Fred

If that was so then how would you seat a primer after FL resizing the case?

Smokeless propellants only function as designed when the ignition is contained under pressure, remove that and the powder just burns inefficiently.

Yes I take you point, the primer pocket would be too small, I'm just cautious when it comes to reloading.

FredB - Why have you resized so many live rounds?

In the early days the military minds were very suspicious of the self contained metallic cartridge fearing that impact etc would cause them to explode. To prove the newly introduced .577 Snider cartridges were safe one was hammered flat on a vice without it detonating.

And it's possible to deprime live primers provided you do it gently and slowly and you can reuse the extracted primer. Waste not want not.

There's a good video on here showing ammo being destroyed in different ways and yes I agree it doesn't go off very easily, although the odd one did. I'd need a really good reason to resize a live round, I'd rather pull it and reassemble it later.

Yes I did this the other day, the primer when compared with an unused primer looked identical, so it went back in the tray.

Iv been re loading for a goodly while and I don't think I have ever resized a live round that's not to say it can not be done. But my advice to you as a novice re loader would be to dismantle any round you are not 100% happy with and start again.