I bought a box of winchester 7.62x39 brass cased for my Romanian ak and almost every spent case has a slight indention in the same spot. Are they still ok to reload? What is causing the indention?
The AK rifle will put two marks or dents on brass casings, one is on the side from the top cover and the other is in the rim from the ejector. You can still reload them but some times the dent on the rim prevents the case from being inserted into the shell holder.
Any autoloader is going to ding your brass when it ejects it. My M1 puts some minor dents in the cases and even 1911s that do not have lowered ejection ports can do a number on cases. My AR is less brutal on brass but you still get the occasional ding. Dings usually work themselves out when you resize them. It's always best to check suspect cases with a flashlight and some sort of feeler to check the inside for bad spots. Even that doesn't always help. One of the guys had a case fail at the base the other day at the range. It was a .243 Winchester case that he had reloaded only twice and he remembered checking them all before he reloaded them. He was going to split the case to see why the base failed. Luckily all he got was a face full of smoke and his shooting glasses saved his eyes from any injury. His Remington 700 survived as well.
When I had rifles chambered in 7.62X39 I did reload my brass cased ammo, I started having a lot of case neck separation on my AKM & SKS's so I quit using them in my auto loaders and use them in my bolt guns with no problems.
I reload for the AK and SKS. Small body dings iron out when fired promptly to be replaced by new ones. Not a huge issue. If the extractor is buggering up the rim you have two options. 1. Remove the buggered up area with a needle file or peen in back into place. 2. Tune the extractor to be less brutal.
It has been hell getting good reloadable 7.62 Rus. brass. Most of it is taco'd or beat to hell. I have some that are in a baggy, but I don't reload for it.
There are alot of brass case Berden primed cases out there too. Might want to check. I know Win is Boxer, or at least mine is.
Small dents NO problem ... I shoot several AKs and SKSs ... None of my SKSs dent the brass like the AKs do ... What I do not like about the commercial AK brass is that some manufactures have small primer pockets while others have a large primer pocket ... not standard between manufactures??? Wonder why??
Remington (R-P) is the only manufacturer that I know of that uses small rifle primers in their X39 brass. I will gladly take it off your hands if it causes you problems.
In this time of primer shortages, I shoot the brass with the primer size I can replace and don't worry about it.