ORIGINAL: turkeyreaper
I was priming a few cases this evening and started having a problem seating the primers (very hard to seat). It looks like when I re-sized & decapped my brass it left part of the primer in the casing. Is this normal? and is the brass shot?
From what I can tell from your photo, the anvil from the old primer is still in the primer pocket. But there's note nough light going into the pocket to tell for sure.
IF that's what's happening, your decapping pin is not entering the case enough to push ALL of the fired primer out! It has to EMPTY OUT the primer pocket completely. Then you take a small flat screwdriverblade and clean all the soot & crud out of the primer pockets before you try to seat the new primer!
I agree that it
LOOKS like you may have a crimped-in primer, BUT the headstamp implies it is
NOT a military case, as it is marked "223 REM", and NO GI brass is marked like that! If indeed the pockets do have a crimp, you can reamout or swage out the crimp edge with a tool made for that, or even a small pocket knife blade. I've prepped many hundreds of GI cases with just a pocket knife!