Armory Sponsor
Posted: 2/17/2012 2:24:23 PM EDT
|
I handload using Hornady carbide pistol dies, and have never had this happen. I went over to a friend's house, as he is getting into reloading, and I was explaining the process, and walking him through the initial steps. We resized about 150 of his R-P (Remington) once fired brass, only to find out that all of his Hornady 125 grain XTP bullets were falling inside his brass.
Is this bad brass? He used RCBS carbide dies, could it be the sizing die? This is a new problem to me. If anyone else has suffered this, please chime in. Edit: The case mouth has NOT been expanded, and we are not using the seater die. The brass has only been resized, and when I was demonstrating something, is when we noticed that when you put the bullet in the case mouth, they fall freely right down in. I believe these are used dies. |
|
If you can drop a bullet in a case that has only been sized, there's something wrong with the sizing die or the bullets, its one of those two, so it should be fairly simple to find out which. I'm assuming that you have checked to make sure his sizing die has been set up properly. |
| Some RP brass has thinner than normal case wall thickness. Your sizing die may be on the large side of spec. I had a 40 S&W Hornady carbide die that would not size brass enough to hold a bullet tightly. Hornady sent a sizing die that works correctly and was pleased that they stood behind their product. Are your bullets exactly on size? IF your expander die is NOT doing any expanding then your sizing die is not sizing enough. Your expanding die expander should be a couple thousandths smaller than bullet size. So you could have a combination of problems with thin brass, oversized sizing die carbide ring, and bullets just a tiny bit undersized. A big clue something is wrong is your expander is doing NO expanding. |
Sorry for the gaps in the story. This is for .38 special. Like, the most simplest caliber in the world to reload.  Since we didn't even try to expand the mouths, the expander die is not part of the problem. We had calipers, and the bullets seemed fine. We were in a bit of a rush, so we are going to go back and set the resizing die starting from scratch. Thanks for the input.
|
|
What are you loading them on? My Dillon SDB bells the case mouth at the powder drop. If it is belling the case mouth too much it will drop in further than is needed. How far into the case are the bullets falling? If they are rattling around loose then you must have the wrong bullets. |
|
He's just sizing them, no belling at all. Quoted: What are you loading them on? My Dillon SDB bells the case mouth at the powder drop. If it is belling the case mouth too much it will drop in further than is needed. How far into the case are the bullets falling? If they are rattling around loose then you must have the wrong bullets. |
| I've seen some RP .38 Special brass that my .38/357 sizing die would not size enough to hold a .38 bullet tight enough. Someone posted that if you run into thin walled .38 cases that you can use a 9MM sizing die and run the .38 cases into the 9MM size die just past where the bullet would stop when seated. Since the 9MM size die is only 2-3 thousandths smaller than a .38 size die it will cause no problems. After sizing in the 9MM size die you would then use your expander die normally. It will give you good neck tension on thin .38 brass. Just one way to salvage the few lots of thin brass you might run into. |
Armory Sponsor