Cheeseland Pest again. How necessary is flash hole de-burrring?
I'm just trying to work up an accurate hunting load for my two 30-06s.
Thanks!
Clay

Mandatory, Tom.

I'm going to have to disagree with my friend, Tom. IMHO it's utterly useless unless you are a benchrester trying for the mythical 10 bullets into the same hole. I have loaded ammunition with and without this tedious little step and it has made absolutely ZERO difference. The most accurate ammunition I've ever loaded was ammo that was in brass that not only did not have the flash hole deburred...but they didn't even have the primer pocket cleaned.

There areall sorts of reloading gadgets out there today that are mostly designed to make the manufacturer money andaccomplish nothing for 99.9% of all reloaders and hunters. Each of us in our reloading career will develop our own style of reloading...little rituals we think we simply MUST do. I wouldn't think of loading ammunition now without cleaning out the primer pocket...even though the first 30 or 40 thousand rounds I reloaded in my life worked wonderfully well without it. Each time Iclean a primer pocket I tell myself I'm silly...but I do it just because it's part of my ritual. I never had a round fail to fire or even "hang fire" because the primer pocket wasn't sparkling clean.

We can carry these rituals to the extreme where reloading ceases to be fun and becomes tedious. Frankly, I think it's all mostly silliness. Most of us aren't capable of shooting much less than 1 MOA at 100 yards even with a gun to our heads. Most of us don't own rifles that are capable of shooting any better than this.........regardless how tedious and how much jicking around we do with each roundof ammo we load.

What then is the point of these exercises?I suggest most of them have NOmeaning in the real world.

i have to agree with pavo. if it gives you more confidence or if you feel it helps....then by all means deburr the flashholes. i don't.... and i really don't think it makes any difference unless the holes are really a mess. some of the things we do for case prep are necessary but a lot of it is just for our own peace of mind and to leave nothing to chance. good luck.[8D]

I thought it was useless until I started getting big chunks of brass out of my cases that was leftover from punching the flash hole. The idea of handloading is to create consistent ammo that is better than factory stuff. It takes about 2 seconds per case. Why not do it?

I reloaded for years without cleaning/deburring the flash hole. Then one day while at a gun store, I was looking thru the reloading stuff, and decided to buy a deburring tool. I also got some chunks of brass out of the casings, but did it improve the accuracy from what it was before? Not in my mind, it didn't. As was said before, a lot of reloaders get pretty anal about their procedures, and I'm one of them. The deburring didn't help one bit in my mind, but I'm gonna continue to do it, because it sure doesn't hurt,and yes, it only takes a few more seconds/case. I do feel that primer pocket cleaning is mandatory, however....

"Mandatory, Tom."



De-burring does help accuracy. All my cases get de-burred.

I do it on my varmint cartridges, I have not seen any benifit from deburring on my big game hunting cartridges, then again I don't shoot deer at 600 yards either

There was another thread about this subject here not long ago and it reminded me I actually HAVE a tool to debur flashholes. And since I was about to reload some unfired 270 brass I thought what better time to change my wicked ways and debur the holes.

So I sat down with my trusty tool and the new brass and proceeded to start deburring them. After each case I shook the brass removed out onto my hand to examine it. What I was actually taking out of the cases looked like a few tiny grains of gold dust. I did about a dozen cases and admitted to myself........this is just a stupid waste of time. I put the tool up somewhereand plan to NEVER touch it again.

Lets consider this idea for a moment. You have a pile of gun powderdumped into a heap in front of you. Will it burn better, faster, cleaner, etc if you touch a match to the left side of the powder or the right?[8D]

What about if we drop the match on top of the powder?[:-]

I think you get the idea how silly this all is.

I tend to agree it dose have to put in perspective. How much differance would it make to a 22 hornet, a 308win, a 300 mag? For smaller cartridges and match shooters may be more. For most big game hunting cartridges shot under real hunting conditions likely not noticable. Like peeing off a rock into lake superoir but please notmypool.
With that said on ten yrs of reloading I gonna have to get one of those tools just to see. If I only see gold dust it will get duty too.
And once a case that wasn't deburedis fired is there any bur left? Seems like any foil like bur would be burnt off? After all once fired shell are the most accurate brass for many reasons.