Okay, I ordered the Baby Crocogator from Lock, Stock & Barrel, primarily because I had to have a hand tool with that name. Besides, I was whipping through the LS&B site, and I hadn’t yet ordered enough items to make us an interesting UPS package.
I looked at the name, looked at the slogan, looked at the name again, and I still don’t get it. Wouldn’t it have to be Croco-Croco or Gator-Gator to bite on both ends? This sounds more like one animal, perhaps with two heads, but clearly not suggestive of two ended coverage. Yet here is was, the J.Dewey Baby Crocogator with, in fact, teeth at both ends.
I had been going through three, maybe four thousand RCBS primer pocket cleaning brushes every few months. Quite frankly, I had begun spending more on brushes than powder and bullets, and I was becoming increasingly concerned, especially since these brushes do such a lousy job. I had looked at pocket formers and various types of reamers, but I was concerned I would be removing critical material, and possibly creating oversized pockets that could result in pressure leaks or premature case failure. When I saw a blurb on the Crocogator and considered J. Dewey’s quality reputation, I thought I’d give it a try.
I collected a bunch of old, well used .243 casings and decapped them. The tool at the left is an RCBS universal decapping die. While it may not seem to be of any great consequence, it did save RCBS from financial ruin by stemming the tide of the huge number of sizing dies I wrecked and sent in for repair under the lifetime warranty. I’d pop in a sizing die and try to run down the decapping pin enough to let me push out the primer without jamming the unlubed case – never worked.
This tool allows me to run through a wide variety of empties, knocking out primers before case cleaning and case forming. It is basically nothing more than a hollow die with a decapping pin. The price is about $12, and it will last for a long time, like forever. Anyway, I digress from the Crocogator.
These are grungy primer pockets. If you handload, you know this stuff can have the consistency of the stuff you might scrap off of an old brake drum and it serves to back out the primer from proper seating.
When a primer is struck, it fires under low pressure and it is backed out of the case and against the breech face. Some incredibly short time later, the main powder charge combusts, and runs the case back against the breech face and back over the primer. In that brief time space between those two events, the primer is backed away from the bottom of the primer pocket, allowing primer charge residue to accumulate where the primer would normally be seated. Unless this is removed before reloading, this will eventually inhibit proper seating and could cause a misfire. For this reason, it is very important to clean primer pockets before seating a new primer.
This is what primer pockets look like after a quick twist or two with this little rotary scraper, clean. Although I don’t like to use the word “scraper” because there is no metal removal, only residue, and it is cleared out even at the radius where the walls join the floor of the pocket – neat, literally. I suspect I will order a couple more. At $5 a piece, I want to make sure I’ve got my back up for when I pack this away and forget the location.
As a closing note, I went through the J. Dewey site, looking for the listing, and found none. Could it be they are not taking ownership for this product ? Anyway, they ship from stock at Lock Stock & Barrel.
Thanks
Joe
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