Seating primers in 223

What do you guys use to seat primers In your 223 cases ? I’m having some issues with the primers getting deformed. I thought it was the lake city brass that I bought but I purchased some lapua brass and still have the same troubles. Just not as much as with the lake city. I’m using a hornady handload inv tool. It works fine for my .243

LC Bass, if the primer crimp is not fully removed you will have messed up primers.

Never had a problem with Lapus 223 cases and primers using an old Lee hand prime or RCBS hand prime

That Hornady priming tool is terrible. As big a fan of pretty much everything Hornady, that is a failure on their part.

RCBS Universal hand held priming tool is what I use for everything. As Kevin said, on the LC brass, you'll know real quick when the military crimp has not been fully cut away, or swaged out. Lapua brass gives me no touble. I primed 100 Lapua .223 brass today.

Double check to make sure you have the small primer stem in your priming tool.

Second the RCBS hand priming tool. I use the strip type tools and bought two so I would not forget to change the press head, which I did before I bought the second one. I really like the strips, easy to load.

I would like to see a pic of the pocket on the LC brass that would not prime.

Thanks fellas

On the lc brass It will prime, but the primers look sort of cratered in. And I've tried every stem and combination that the Hornady tool came with. lol
Even bought different primers thinking maybe they were soft or something.

Is this the Hornady tool that uses the standard shell holder? If it is that can be a problem if using another manufactures shell holder. Some are slightly thicker or thinner than others causing a depth issue on seating prmers ahile others do not have a large enough hole for the stem in the hornady hand primer

Dillon 550

Just loaded a batch on my 550 a few minutes ago... first .223’s I have loaded on it. Loaded a bunch of 308 and Creedmoor’s on it since I got it about two months ago. I almost think I like it better than my 650.

Did you swage the pockets on the LC brass?

Check the rod that pushes the primer into the pocket. You may be seeing an imprint of the rod on the primer.

I use the lee hand primer. All the .223 brass i had trouble with loading the primers were military spec brass like LC and some Federal. usually was from me not cleaning out the primer pockets good enough with the reamer. Lyman makes a good multi-tool for that and has chamfering tools with it as well.