Tear Down ammo question

[1911_username]

I see allot of sites that sell these Tear Down ammo you can purchase in bulk. From what I can figure peeps buy them to salvage the projectile and brass and sprinkle the powder on the flower bed.

So my questions are these:

1. Where do the majority of this ammo come from? Are these decommissioned military ammo or are these considered factory seconds?

2. Can you still keep the primers in the brass or need to remove and discard. If so how do you remove a live primers safely?

3. Is it worth the effort? 

[ArizonaGunOwners.com]

[steve2md]

So my questions are these:

1. Where do the majority of this ammo come from? Are these decommissioned military ammo or are these considered factory seconds? Both, with certain calibers being more likely to be military (5.56/.308)

2. Can you still keep the primers in the brass or need to remove and discard. If so how do you remove a live primers safely? If you have a shortened decapping pin, or remove the pin, you can just neck size these, but I decap and still save the primers to reinstall.

3. Is it worth the effort?

Really depends on the price you pay. I'll pick up .224 pull down projectiles when I can get them for half or less the price of new components.

[1911_username]

So how do you decap with out damaging the primer? Can't picture it safely that is..   Won't the decap pin even shortened depress the anvil inside the primer?

[steve2md]

To use a shortened pin, it has to be short enough to not touch the primer at all at full stroke. To deprime the live primers, I just use a lee universal decapping die. Never had one go off yet. Just don't slam the handle down.  If you didn't decap live primers, you'd have to throw away every "mess up" piece of brass that you had to pull down. I can't see the sense in that

[1911_username]

Gotcha! Thanks!

[rubinschmidt]

When I have bought the tear down rounds, about half appear to be perfectly fine with no apparent reason for "rejection". There's no telling why these were culled, but it's impossible to tell if they actually have a problem or (as I suspect) someone was too lazy to put them back in a box and return them to the agency that is paying for them. These are almost always loaded with inexpensive plated bullets. Don't order tear downs thinking you are going to get a bonanza of premium bullets. My experience is that you might get a few, and only a few.

Maybe 5-10 percent have light primer hits showing.

Another 1- 5% have bullet set back, particularly in a round like 357 SIG

Another 5-10 percent are unreclaimable since they were FTFs that never made it into the chamber and the case and bullet are damaged beyond use.

Maybe 10-20% have a missing or improperly seated primer (sideways or upside down)

I know this doesn't add up to 100%, but you get the idea.

As far as depriming, I don't recommend using your standard rezing die. I use a die a little larger than the case I am decapping, since this will leave room for gasses to vent in case one does off. You can also control the speed at which the case is decapped and minimize the likelihood of one popping off. Where eye protection while doing this. I've never had one go off, and I have decapped many thousands of live primers, but prudence may save you someday.

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