# Primers clogging up my Lee Classic Cast Press



## 97th Signalman (Apr 10, 2008)

I have a Lee Classic Cast press that I have been using for years with no issues at all. I often use my Lee cast turret press to reload my pistol ammo but I usually use my single stage Lee Classic press to remove primers prior to cleaning the fired brass.

This Lee Classic single stage is one of those that discharges the primere down through the large hollow ram into a plastic tube at the bottom of the ram. Last night, when I removed the tube to empty it, I noticed that there didn't seem to be many primers in the transparent plastic tube after depriming 250 pieces of 9mm brass. I pulled off the tube and emptied it and tried to shine a light up through the ram to see if it was clear.

Bad news; it was totally clogged with primers. It took lots of ramming and poking with a cleaning rod from above and below to clear out the several hundred primers that were clogging up the ram. They had apparently bridged over the hole at the bottom of the ram (The interior of the ram is drilled in several steps varying in diameters ; large to small from top to bottom). I am guessing that the primers bridged at the last and smallest step where the exit hole is near the bottom of the ram.

Some the first to come out the bottom were large pistol primers left over from previouisly depriming a batch of .45 ACP brass. I suspect that the problem started with those large primers and I just didn't notice at the time.

I do keep the primer arm in while depriming because if you don't, the primers will bounce off the cross pin inside the ram and pop out the side of the ram and can be a real PITA. However, that primer arm does inhibit what would otherwise be a straight drop to hole at the bottom of the ram. Therefore, they probably bounce around the ram interior during their fall to exit hole.

Has this ever happened to anyone else using the Lee Classic cast press? Is there anyting that I can to do to avoid this seemingly rare occurance? Although it has only happend to me on this one occasion, it took a while to clear the log jamb and the process scattered dead primers all over the floor. I imagine that I will be finding them for weeks.

I plan to call Lee Presicion to discuss this but I thought that I would also seek help from the experts here. I can suggest two mods that Lee could make, assuming that they would care to do so. They could use a tapered countersink to alleviate that lowest sharp stepped edge where the primers seemed to get hung up. They could also make some sort of piece to fill the primer arm slot in the ram so that you could deprime without having the primer arm in place to prevent primer escape. That would make for a straighter drop of the primers with less likelyhood that they would get hung up at the last step.

Anyway, can any of you guys suggest how to avoid this troublesome issue. Please don't suggest the I buy a different press because I really like this one. It is generally reserved only for loading my larger caliber rifle ammo but I do use it for all my depriming.


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## 97th Signalman (Apr 10, 2008)

I have done some more thinking and remembering. Just before depriming 250 ea 9mm cases, I deprimed a batch of 500 .45ACP cases. While doing that batch of .45 ACP cases I wasn't paying attention to the flexible plastic primer discharge tube and I allowed it to over fill before emptying it. That probably backed up a mess of those large pistol primers into the ram where, in all likelyhood, it caused the jamb up that remained behind even after I emptied the overfilled discharge tube. The resulting clogging from this earilier error on my part didn't show up until I deprimed the subsequent batch of 9mm cases.

LESSON LEARNED: Empty your primer discharged tube before it is full to the top. Or, alternately, when depriming large batches, remove the cap from the end of the tube and let the primers fall directly into a bucket during the depriming process.

My apologies for taking up your time. Maybe others can learn from my mistake.


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