Best case lube?

STP, plus good for hair if I had any. Dip bullet base in graphite and never weld issue. Can of STP will last forever. No clue how many cases sized with can on bench! Poured into nalgrne bottle for storage and easier use.
 
One shot is the expense I am willing to pay after trying multiple DIY home made sin concoctions and stuck cases. I haven't stuck a case in 16yrs with it. I spray all 4 sides and the diagonals in a 50ct plastic tray with necks up. I get some spray in the mouths. Wait two 3 minutes before sizing. When I place on the shell holder I rotate the case and use my fingers to rub them down from case mouth to case head. That is about a 2-3 second step. I do this to prevent hydraulic sizing. (I've sized cases with a week-old spray on them too, no problems)

I constantly check shoulder bump on fired vs sized cases. I bump .002" from fired state. I have a straight force press, no snap/cam over. I do have to keep my press stroke consistent and feel where I need to stop on the down stroke. Too little pressure on the downstroke, shoulder not bumped enough. Too much pressure on the downstroke and bumped too far. I get .002-.003" bump with my method. Maybe I have worked around the downfall of this lube hydraulically sizing cases, or the issue it creates. I wonder if I were to use a snap/cam over press if I'd loose that ability of feeling where I need to be with the press stroke. Hmmmm.
Yes this is what I'm talking about, I had to mess around with pressure on my handle to try and get shoulder where I wanted and many times pushing it back further than I wanted, once I got unique this was no longer an issue, I could push the handle to the stops and get the same bump even if I pushed harder on the handle and it went through buttery smooth Everytime. Hmmm maybe butter would work. In fact after sizing with Hornady one shot I started grouping my cases by shoulder bump which sucks cause I'm basically making different rounds. Were you FL sizing with expander and what would you do if shoulder bump was not enough?
 
I have been using Hornady Unique and have been happy with the performance. For neck lube I dip it into the imperial dry neck lube.
 
I guess I am the only one using Forster High Pressure lube for resizing then tumble cases and use Imperial neck lube (graphite)for mandrel sizing on the cleaned cases. Works well for me and no cold weld as best I can tell.
 
Last edited:
Imperial sizing die wax hands down.

I wax the body, neck, and use bore mop to apply some in the case neck. After I'm done with my sizing op, FL die without expander button, and expander mandrel, I will tumble in rice which is something I'm currently playing with that is recommended by Primal Rights. I was applying Redding Graphite lube to the necks, but I continuously had galling problems on my mandrels. Once I switched to just using Imperial wax on the inside and outside of the neck the galling completely stopped.

Previously I had been cleaning with wet tumblers, but Greg has reported more consistent seating pressures with tumbling with rice, so I'm giving it a go. Promising results thus far.

Rice tumbling from Primal Rights: https://www.primalrights.com/library/articles/clean-brass-with-rice
 
Last edited:
Yes this is what I'm talking about, I had to mess around with pressure on my handle to try and get shoulder where I wanted and many times pushing it back further than I wanted, once I got unique this was no longer an issue, I could push the handle to the stops and get the same bump even if I pushed harder on the handle and it went through buttery smooth Everytime. Hmmm maybe butter would work. In fact after sizing with Hornady one shot I started grouping my cases by shoulder bump which sucks cause I'm basically making different rounds. Were you FL sizing with expander and what would you do if shoulder bump was not enough?
I FL size with expander. The ones that don't get enough bump I would run twice, but use little pressure and I can squeak out another .001-.002". The ones that get too much, maybe 2 out of 50 I save for batch to run them all someday.
 
I FL size with expander. The ones that don't get enough bump I would run twice, but use little pressure and I can squeak out another .001-.002". The ones that get too much, maybe 2 out of 50 I save for batch to run them all someday.
I had done the same thing till I realized I was working the neck all over again, compressing it and expanding it again and would also cause a lot of runout not to mention work hardening your brass which contributes to different neck interference.
 
I had done the same thing till I realized I was working the neck all over again, compressing it and expanding it again and would also cause a lot of runout not to mention work hardening your brass which contributes to different neck interference.
Maybe it does, but all my rounds still shoot good. I anneal my brass so I might be lucking out.
 
Annealing the brass makes it size easier and with less spring back so having to change your pressure on cases to get same shoulder bumps just confirms what I said about one shot, not so good, if you don't care about consistency so much it's fine, it all depends what someone wants to get out of their rounds and what they're using them for, don't need match grade ammo for everything.
 
Annealing the brass makes it size easier and with less spring back so having to change your pressure on cases to get same shoulder bumps just confirms what I said about one shot, not so good, if you don't care about consistency so much it's fine, it all depends what someone wants to get out of their rounds and what they're using them for, don't need match grade ammo for everything.
"Maybe I have worked around the downfall of this lube hydraulically sizing cases, or the issue it creates." So, I'm gonna give bean's STP method whirl and see if I can get a hard stop each time at .002."
 

Recent Posts

Top