Could use some advice on neck sizing?

[jimbires]

I have always heard that story about you can only have so much neck tension but my Collet bullet puller tells me there's more to the story than that! It's one of those.....it makes sense ideas.... till you spend some time pulling bullets and seeing the huge variance and how easy they come out of the hole.....lol!

after you pulled the bullet does the neck measure the same as before you seated the bullet , or did the bullet expand the neck ?



I'm not sure bullet pulling resistence means much . I don't think the bullet gets blown out of the brass case when it's fired . I think the brass case expands and releases the bullet .

 

[kraky1]

I'm not a metallurgist but something I read on the internet ....so it has to be true...might be at play. That is that a case mouth tries to spring back towards the direction it was worked from last... so in the case of a Lee collet die you are squeezing the case mouth in and therefore the case would try to work its way back open again. In the case of an expander ball going through a case mouth you're expanding it outward and therefore it would try to contract later. All I can say from experience is that pulling a bullet that was seated with a standard Mandrell and a Lee collet die is like sliding butter.... pulling a bullet from a FL die that leaves a case mouth .003 to .0035 undersized is very different. Just last night I goofed up -loading some 7mmo8 w/Hornady round nose bullets I seated the first 2 too deep... I was pretty surprised at the effort it took to pull them up just 10 minutes after I had seated them.
I even see the benchrest crowd is now using gauges on their seating presses that tell them how much effort it took to seat a bullet.... if the end result was that no matter what they wound up having the same grip it wouldn't make sense they would bother doing this?

 

[Wincheringen]

I can't tell you anything about the Lee dies, I've never used them. I do neck size my 6.5 Creedmoor though, I use a 289 bushing in a Redding Type S neck die. It provides plenty of neck tension.

 

[jimbires]

I'm not a metallurgist but something I read on the internet ....so it has to be true...might be at play. That is that a case mouth tries to spring back towards the direction it was worked from last... so in the case of a Lee collet die you are squeezing the case mouth in and therefore the case would try to work its way back open again. In the case of an expander ball going through a case mouth you're expanding it outward and therefore it would try to contract later. All I can say from experience is that pulling a bullet that was seated with a standard Mandrell and a Lee collet die is like sliding butter.... pulling a bullet from a FL die that leaves a case mouth .003 to .0035 undersized is very different. Just last night I goofed up -loading some 7mmo8 w/Hornady round nose bullets I seated the first 2 too deep... I was pretty surprised at the effort it took to pull them up just 10 minutes after I had seated them.
I even see the benchrest crowd is now using gauges on their seating presses that tell them how much effort it took to seat a bullet.... if the end result was that no matter what they wound up having the same grip it wouldn't make sense they would bother doing this?

Yes , I agree with the brass spring back in either direction . a few years ago I did some measuring and found this to be true . I still believe that at a certain point the bullet acts like an expander and you will not gain any more neck tension . I wonder if caliber size affects this, I think it would ? I've never gave much thought on the press mounted seating pressure gauges . the BR guys work with same lot numbers of everything , and everything gets exactly the same treatment .you're exactly right though , they are watching for something . I'm glad you brought this up , it gives me something to think on and try to find an answer to.

" the more I know , the less I understand "

 

[SJB358]

" the more I know , the less I understand "

That's a fact!

 

[Cleveland48]

I tried the annealing with a candle last night, and it's about as simple as can be lol. I did 15 cases for my OCW test I'm working on. That brass warms up pretty darn quick lol. I'm assuming they are annealed anyways I only put the neck to the flame. Some very mild discoloring of case neck, but doesn't look anything like the factory annealed lapua cases.,Which show discoloring past the shoulder.


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[joelkdouglas]

I tried holding just the neck vs holding neck and shoulder in the flame and I couldn't tell a difference in results. They aren't as pretty as new Lapua brass afterwards but I can really tell a difference when I resize them.

I do wipe them off with a rag. If you wanted you could put them in a tumbler. I don't tumble brass much anymore


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[Cleveland48]

I just resized them and and I could tell a difference also. I used the wet rag also, I have a Lyman tumbler and sad to say I've never even turned it on lol. I'm happy with the candle flame annealing. It's cheap and about as simple as can get!


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[kraky1]

Fwiw.... I use a true tool to correct run out on the cases that give me trouble.... the funny thing about Lapua brass is even though it's got that cool shiny shoulder and everybody thinks it's so softly annealed.... it's got some of the toughest stiffest necks to move even in virgin form. Probably the brand of brass that is soft and stays that way long time is Norma... it must be the Alloy mix.
Sometimes Remington and Winchester are pretty good too and other times not.... how easily they move in the true tool is my thermometer as far as when to do annealing.

 

[jimbires]

I tried the annealing with a candle last night, and it's about as simple as can be lol. I did 15 cases for my OCW test I'm working on. That brass warms up pretty darn quick lol. I'm assuming they are annealed anyways I only put the neck to the flame. Some very mild discoloring of case neck, but doesn't look anything like the factory annealed lapua cases.,Which show discoloring past the shoulder.


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don't worry about the color , it means nothing . most of my annealed cases show very little to no signs of being annealed .

 

[Cleveland48]

Ok thanks! Fixing to start throwing the powder to them! I'll run my OCW test next weekend


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[Cleveland48]

Ok my earlier measurement on my dummy round was different than my cases after I annealed and sized the. My annealed brass necks measured .288 and after seating measured .291. So I have .003" of neck tension on my annealed brass. That should be good for a hunting load I would expect. My digital scale was throwing me a curve tonight. I had it turned on for 24 hours so it would be warm for tonight's loads. I was loading in .3 grain increments for this OCW test. Threw first powder charge and it was little low, trickled up to 41.5 then went to get my drink. Came back it was showing 42.8, so I pulled out the trusty old Lyman 1000 beam scale. I forgot how nice it was to actually watch the scale move for every little grain that you trickled in. So the Lyman digital scale is now at the back of the bench until I need it out of necessity.


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