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Old December 5, 2012, 03:19 PM   #1
rajbcpa
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Ever have bullet lube build up and push a bullet deep into the case?

I was using some lead cast bullets (FN) with the blue lube and one of the press pulls felt a tad strange. When I released the handle there was a ton of blue bullet lube on one case (at the bullet head) and the completed round was clearly shorter than the rest.

Apparently, a bunch of blue bullet lube accumulated in the die and then pushed the bullet deep into the case.

How do you prevent this from happening? Should I do a plunk test on this entire batch or measure each round - about 250?

My usual procedure is to plunk the first 10 or so after any die adjustment and at the start of every new batch...

thx..
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Old December 5, 2012, 03:38 PM   #2
schmellba99
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When loading hard cast lead, always clean excess lube off the projectiles before loading. If your are using projos that consistently are over lubed, you need to find an alternate source of projectiles or you will constantly be cleaning lube off of everything.

About every 5k rounds, I take my die apart and give it a good cleaning. Usually minimal buildup, but I've had some projectiles that were pretty sloppy in the lube department that left a lot of leftover in the die.

On your batch, depending on how you are loading you may need to do some spot checks. Odds are though that if you can feel something different as you are loading, you already know which one(s) need to be pulled and re-seated.
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Old December 5, 2012, 04:07 PM   #3
johnjohn
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Liquid alox tumble lube is probably the world's worst for doing this.
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Old December 5, 2012, 04:14 PM   #4
rajbcpa
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This happened in a 4 stage progressive press. Station #1 is sizing/priming, #2 is powder/flairing, #3 is seating and #4 is crimping....


As I recall, this happened in Station #3 - bullet seating. So is the the only die I need to carefuly watching and periodically clean when using lead cast bullets?

If you open a package of lead cast bullets and there is too much bullet lube, how do you remove the excess?

thx...
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Old December 5, 2012, 05:06 PM   #5
schmellba99
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Your seater die is the only one you'll really need to ever worry about cleaning, barring some weird circumstance.

If you open the box and there is excess lube everywhere and you are just hell bent on loading them, elbow grease. A good terry cloth and some time in front of the tv is about all you can do. If it's that bad for me, I'd send them back unless I got such a smoking deal on them that I expected something like that to be the catch (has happened before).
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