308 reloading

[Thunderkiss]

I use a Lymans pad with the lube that came with the kit. After resizing I wipe them off with an old tshirt. No stuck cases for all the calibers I reload for using this method. 30-06, .308, 7-08, .270, .260, 25-06, .243, .22-250, .223 never a stuck case for resizing.

[308Loader]

I use 3 pumps of spray lube in a plastic bag. Toss the cases around in bag to coat them evenly. full length resize. Then toss the lubed cases in tumbler with crushed walnut from the pet store to remove lube. tumble for 5 min, then wipe dust off with soft cloth. Trim them to 2.005", camphor and de burr.

[Snyper]

Snyper, do some research and learn what dies Sierra Bullets resized their totally unprepped, commercial, uneven wall thickness cases with testing their best match bullets that produced 10-shot groups at 100 yards in their California plant decades ago equalling what benchrest records are today.

Aren't you the one who always says a random small group means little?

NEW cases have had the necks sized on the inside at least once.

What Sierra does in a factory has little relevence to what happens with most reloaders using fired brass

[stubbicatt]

Per Bart B.

Snyper, do some research and learn what dies Sierra Bullets resized their totally unprepped, commercial, uneven wall thickness cases with testing their best match bullets that produced 10-shot groups at 100 yards in their California plant decades ago equalling what benchrest records are today.

Bart B I understand the procedure you described in an earlier posting in this thread, and agree that a FL die with a properly dimensioned neck section will produce very uniform and concentric brass, with uniformed brass, neck turned etc. If I understand you correctly you are saying that even without having uniformed the case necks this method produces exceptional ammunition?

In your first posting in this thread you stated (paraphrased) that a die with neck honed out to provide approximately .002" neck tension will produce exceptional ammunition, but to me this implies again properly prepped case necks.

Do you use a neck mandrel to expand the insides of your standard, non neck turned, case necks to a uniform diameter? Or do you employ an expander ball even with the honed-neck dies?

I can foresee not only really erratic neck tension in non uniformed brass without using an expander ball and honed neck FL dies, but potential difficulties in seating flat based bullets with some really thick necked cases using this method.

Please I am not being a weisenheimer, only trying to understand.

Regards,
Stubb

[Bart B.]

Snyper’s snippets:

Aren't you the one who always says a random small group means little?

Yes, but in my post I stated “groups” which is plural and that means more than one. Those I got to inspect were a dozen or more sheafs of paper target cut out with Sierra’s 10-shot groups from their .308 caliber 168 HPMK shot from unprepped Western .308 Win cases. Those several random groups measured from just under .25" down to a bit over .10" and averaged a little under .2 inch. One of the current benchrest records comprising the aggreate of 5 or 10 ten shot group is a bit over .2 inch; the average of all groups shot.

NEW cases have had the necks sized on the inside at least once.

Maybe. The set of coin, cup, draw, head, groove, bunt and neck new case forming dies I saw didn’t have any inside neck forming thing whatsoever. Doesn’t matter anyway.

What Sierra does in a factory has little relevence to what happens with most reloaders using fired brass

I don’t know why not. They use the same over the counter components and dies commercially available to every one. They use commercial brass and full length resize it several times in standard Redding dies; bushing ones for cartridges they’re made for and standard ones for the others. They shoot a lot of it in commercial and custom rifles to develop load data. And they get many reloads per case. How is that different than what their customers do?

Stubbicat’s comments and excellent questions:

Bart B I understand the procedure you described in an earlier posting in this thread, and agree that a FL die with a properly dimensioned neck section will produce very uniform and concentric brass, with uniformed brass, neck turned etc. If I understand you correctly you are saying that even without having uniformed the case necks this method produces exceptional ammunition?

Yes; it produces exceptional ammo. Sierra Bullets does this with Redding full bushing dies.

Such dies do not produce very uniform and concentric brass. The sized cases still have their normal spread in wall thickness and that makes them not perfectly round and their outside dimensions vary a bit across a lot of cases. Of course, the die sizing chamber is not perfectly round either. Same for rifle barrel chambers. It doesn’t take near the precision of case dimensions to shoot a bullet fairly well centered in a rifle barrel’s hole where the rifling is. Very close to perfect is good enough. It’s the barrel’s insides that guides the bullet that have to be perfect to the nth degree.

In your first posting in this thread you stated (paraphrased) that a die with neck honed out to provide approximately .002" neck tension will produce exceptional ammunition, but to me this implies again properly prepped case necks.

I tried turning case necks to total uniformity to a spread of less than .0002". They shot no more accurate in my SAAMI spec chambers than unturned necks with over .0010" spread in wall thickness. Again, Sierra’s unprepped cases shoot exceptionally tiny groups from non uniform cases so sized.

Do you use a neck mandrel to expand the insides of your standard, non neck turned, case necks to a uniform diameter? Or do you employ an expander ball even with the honed-neck dies?

Nothing I have touches the inside of my case necks except a bore brush to clean the powder residue out. My honed out dies don’t have expander balls; I removed them and decap with a decapping die before cleaning and sizing them. And a perfectly round ball or expander of any type will not make case mouths perfectly round when the neck wall thickness is not uniform. That’s not important because their insides are perfectly round when the bullet’s seated, or at least as round as the bullet is. Redding and RCBS bushing dies don’t have expander balls to open up sized down necks either. Expander balls bend case necks after a gelded sizing die makes them very straight.

I can foresee not only really erratic neck tension in non uniformed brass without using an expander ball and honed neck FL dies, but potential difficulties in seating flat based bullets with some really thick necked cases using this method.

Could be, but the spread of it’s microscopic. Sierra’s results with their unmodified commercial Redding bushing dies on their unprepped cases have no problems shooting their best match bullets into groups at 200 yards that would win benchrest matches. How much spread in release force changes with such out of round stuff I’ve shot makes little difference; maybe a couple hundredths of an inch at 1000 yards. Here’s a 1000 yard target with its X ring 10 inches in diameter. 15 twice fired cases sized in a full length sizing die with their necks honed out a couple thousandths less than loaded round neck diameter and necks uniformed to uniform thickness. The other 15 were unprepped virgin brass; never fired before.



Loads were fired alternately; black, red, black, red to get an idea how 30 shots of each would do. All 30 shots inside 6 inches. Each group’s about 4.5 inches Which one’s shot with virgin unprepped cases?

[Metal god]

I predict you will hear something like . If your case neck walls are off by .002 in thickness that only misaligns the bullet in the bore axis by .001 . Well with in acceptable tolerances . .003 is only .0015 off bore axis . really not all that hateful . So unless your looking to set some world records .003 difference in wall thickness is not going to kill your buzz

Edit : oh man , Bart you posted while I was writing . well now I'll go back and read your post and see if what I just wrote is accurate NOPE

[stubbicatt]

Thanks Bart B. I wouldn't have figured that kind of performance. But then, the older you get, the more you hear, and the better you learn!

Since I don't really enjoy neck turning all that much anyway, I may just have to abandon the process! For my factory chambers. My 6.5x47L has a fairly tight chamber, I skim about .001" off the necks for a safety factor.

As a followup question, the .002" neck tension, is that measured on the cases with the thinnest necks? I would imagine that most likely, if it were the thicker necks the thin ones might not be sized enough to hold a bullet.

[Bart B.]

Neck tension is typically meant to be the difference between the sizing die's neck diameter and that of a loaded round. But it's not exact.

A better way would be to measure the diameter of a sized case mouth then compare that to a bullet diameter. That's the actual difference between the sized case mouth and bullet diameter wise. Depending on the amount of friction between the case and bullet as well as case hardness and that interference fit, the amount of force needed to seat the bullet as well as push it out by internal case pressure will vary. That force is called "release force" in the ammo industry as it's most meaningful.

Thicker neck walls in a given die neck diameter will make the case mouth smaller in diamter than thinner neck walls. But that's grade school mechanics. Choosing the die's neck diameter should be based on the thinnest neck wall cases used. And a.001" or more spread in neck wall thickness matters little.