disassembling 223 rounds

Finally I'm finished taking apart all the 223 ammo and FL resizing all the cases. Over the decades I've loaded up a lot of ammo, but really haven't taken many rounds apart. I would just shoot em all and load more. So today I ran into some interesting surprises. Nothing real big, but all unexpected. What I found was:

- some of the bullets, maybe 1 out of every 20 or so, were quite hard to pull from the case. I used an RCBS Collet Puller. Why would a bullet seated in a previously fired brass case be significantly harder to remove? Beats me. They were all loaded in exactly the same way.
- all the loads were with H335, and every now and then I'd come to a case where the powder would not pour out. It had crusted over in the case. Poke the crust with a tiny screwdriver and the powder would then pour.

I'm assuming that those bullets that were hard to pull were flyers waiting to happen.

Once again, if you check those cases where the bullets were harder to pull you may find the case necks have some thicker brass. You also mentioned lubing the necks, several might have had more or less lube resulting in different neck tension. May also be in trimming, if you have more/longer neck length there is more to grasp the bullet. Just my thoughts and experience.

Pretty sure those things you listed weren't the cause. On the tougher ones to pull, when the bullet came loose, there is as a distinct, though faint, sound, like the bullet was really stuck in place rather than just held a bit tighter. And, there's a better than even chance that the cases were neck sized with a Lee Collet Die, and I'd have used no lube at all in the neck. I can't come up with a reason that really makes sense to me.

If I was a precision shooter, I'd worry about what was causing the stuck bullets.

How did you originally clean the brass

Hard to be sure how I cleaned the brass, since the loads were done on different dates and months. I don't normally tumble brass unless it's really nasty. I don't polish the insides of the necks, so there would be some small amount of combustion products in the necks and maybe a very small amount of RCBS lube. The only variable in the whole process could be the RCBS lube, sometimes being very little and possibly in rare cases being more. I think every last case had been fired at least once, so there was never a case with a totally clean inside surface. All the bullets were Nosler 40 gr BT's.

And I still can't come up with logic on why the H335 crusted over in a few of the cases. Humidity, maybe?

I have seen powders do that as well. I have heard of bullets cold bonding over a period of time to the case neck especially of squeaky clean cases but since these were not cleaned I would only surmise that it was variations in spring back due to work hardening.

Are you sure the collet puller wasn't occasionally catching the very tip of the neck? Some rounds might be slightly longer than others - explaining the '1 in 20' occurrence.

Powder Crust in neck sounds like occasional excess lube, that would have further been concentrated (scraping from neck, to base of bullet while seating), reacting with the forward bit of powder, over time.

For a bit more detail most often my brass cleaning consists of using steel wool to clean any carbon off the outside of the case neck. Just twirl the case in the steel wool. Works fast. I don't tumble brass unless it's badly tarnished. And then I'll clean the primer pocket.

So...the inside of the case neck has carbon on it. I'll use the Lee Collet Die, so no lube is used. Seems to me that my approach has nothing that would cause bonding of the bullet to the case. And it appears that in most cases, no bonding or sticking occurs. But...as I've said, sometimes the bullet appears to stick to some degree in the case neck. This is something I would not know if I hadn't been pulling bullets, which is a very rare occurrence for me.

As for just grabbing the tip of the bullet and not getting a good grip, that did happen a few times, and the first couple of times it happened I thought maybe that was why the bullet didn't come out. So I'd run the bullet into the collet further for max grip and then pull it. And a few, as I've mentioned, didn't want to come out, and I'd get that faint noise or click sound.

Worst case is that I assume that a slightly stuck bullet will cause a flyer. I use this ammo for paper and coyote punching, so no major crisis if I have the occasional flyer. Won't matter much to the coyote.

I was thinking grabbing tip of the CASE neck, not tip of bullet.
Faint 'click' would be the collet finally 'slipping' off the case and onto just around the bullet.

No, that wasn't the problem. Actually I'd have to give the Rockchucker arm good pressure to get the bullet far enough up into the collet. That's why I thought you were talking about the bullet tip and not the case tip.