Decapping Station

Yep...I set up the Lee Universal Decapper on this single stage and it works great. Mounted it on a block of Oak so I can move it around. Done over 2K Military 223 shells and still on the same pin.

http://leeprecision.com/decapping-die.html

Lee Breech Lock Hand Press

Lee Universal Depriming and Decapping Die

Decapping is a filthy endeavor. I would never do it in the house, as others have mentioned, regardless of the tool. And in my experience, having a dedicated decapping press makes life easy.

Lee makes the most versatile, and least expensive, decapping die on the market. The die is barely $15 and the set of universal case holders is a mere $30. Used with an inexpensive press, you can make quick work of the chore, then wipe the mess off of everything when done.

It sounds like the OP wants to set up a dedicated press for decapping, and that is ideal IMO because it sounds like he wants to run a Dillon progressive, and decapping on a progressive just introduces all that filth to your expensive and synchronized equipment. in fact, and here's where I take a left turn and mention brass processing...

Do yourself a favor and decap everything, then tumble in SS pins. Go read about it if you don't know what that is, but I can tell you with absolute certainty, your brass will be cleaner faster, and your reloading process will be cleaner if you decap first, then tumble in pins. Period. It may not be in the budget now, but it is soooo worth the set up cost. And I know, everyone's grand dad's grand dad did it a certain way , and that's the way we learn to do it, but if you follow this simple advice, you will be truly pleased with the results.

Hope this helps,

Matt

Matt

I do want to set up a dedicated deacapping station in my garage but not with my dillon press. I only mentioned my dillon in reference to thats all that Im familar with and Ive only used that for one caliber in the past.

I bought last weekend an RCBS single station press for this. I recently also purchased a 9L ultrasonic cleaner which I have set up on the bench with the RCBS press. So current plan is to deprime the casings and put through the ultrasonic.

The thousand or so casings I tried so far came out very clean including insides and primer pockets but I think the tumbler does a lil nicer job of making them shiney. With that said though I will probably never use my tumbler again.

It only took about 10-20 minutes to run a batch of casings through the sonic compared to hours and hours through the tumbler, no dust mess, no having to strain all the shells out of the tumbler and best of all the sonic is near silent compared to the tumbler.

Im still experimenting with the new cleaner but think I would have no problem running a thousand or more casings through it at a time depending on which baskets / pans I use in the machine and in that regard I could put separate pans to clean guns at the same time.

Does the LEE dies work in the RCBS press?

And you are right about the decapping mess which brings to mind the RCBS partner press primer catcher sucks. I think I winded up with more primers on my garage floor than I did in the catcher. Any suggestions / recommendations are appreciated.

Hey Philly,

Yes, the lee dies work with just about all presses, except for the Dillon SDB and a few older Lyman presses. I want to say that some 50 BMG dies are different too, but not relevant to this conversation. There's lots of people who feel that LEE offers lesser quality, yet choose to install the LEE factory crimp die because it works best and does a final sizing of the cartridge. Some folks prefer the locking rings of the Hornady over other brands, so they will mix in dies that give them the results they prefer.

Primer catcher: Most presses have a hole that the spent primer drops into once pushed free. On the LEE breech lock, the primer funnels into a tube, which directs the primer towards the floor where you can place a bucket. I found that the primers still ended up on the floor, so I added a piece of clear plastic tubing that feeds into an empty Gatorade bottle. It will catch about 3000 primers before I have to empty it. If your press funnels the primers into the inside of the press frame, just drill a hole in the table under the press frame and add a catcher of some sort beneath it.

As for the tumbler and SS pins... these pins are designed to run wet in a rotary tumbler rather than a vibratory tumbler. The rotary/SS combo only runs for about 1.5 hours to give the best result. In fact, the only time I use my vibratory tumbler is on finished cartridges to remove all lube and finger prints and give them a nice shine. 15 minutes with some good, ammonia free brass polish (Maybe 1/2 shot glass in walnut) makes the final product look like factory ammo.

I have limited experience with sonic cleaners, using a friend's industrial unit for a short time to experiment. My opinion is that they work great for cleaning the nooks and crannies of gun parts (I really like the results on this front) and it does a decent job on gently used, once fired brass. But for range brass, stained brass found after being in the sun for a month, the ss pin process scours the brass and removes any stains, deep scratches and scores, and makes it shine. I didn't start off with SS pins, but once I tried it, I never looked back.