Body die issues.

[fishwater]

I am loading for a .338 Lapua Improved with a 40deg shoulder.

The rifle is new to me and so are the dies (Redding S variety,) here is the situation...

I am working with about 60 brass that is 2-3 X's fired. When I got the brass, I tumbled it in S.S. media and water, annealed it all, (by hand with 750deg F. Tempilaq, trimmed it all to the same length, chamfered&deburred and then.... NECK SIZED ONLY, WITHOUT the expander ball...

So at this point everything was great, brass all nice and shiny, all the same length, neck sized only, with good neck tension...

Yesterday, I noticed that about half of the rounds chambered easily and some of them were a little tight. So, I figured AH-HA! this is the perfect opportunity for me to use my new body die for the first time and bump the shoulders back.

So I got the body die all set up and I am bumping them back to the point that I can still just barley feel them chambering.. (They are not as tight as they were, but it is still a LITTLE harder to close then if the chamber was totally empty.) So I am thinking this should be about perfect...

Now the problem... After coming out of the body die there is a slight bulge at the bottom of the neck. It basically runs from where the neck resizing bushing stops and where the shoulder starts. The brass is THICKER on the INSIDE AND the OUTSIDE now in the affected area. I know it is thicker on the inside, because I ran my case neck trimmer mandrel inside the neck and it stops at the bulge and would not go in any further.

At this point I have only ran 5 brass through the body die. On every one, the case neck trimmer mandrel (.334" Dia.) would not go all the way down inside the neck, it keeps getting stopped at the interior bulge area. I know there is a bulge on the outside, because I can see it with the naked eye...

I threw the FL die in the press and ran just the expander ball through the necks on those 5 brass just now so I wouldn't have any unwanted tight spots... Now, I have uniform interior neck diameter, and brass that is fitting in the chamber perfectly. There is a little exterior bulge is all...

So, am I doing something wrong or out of order? Or, is this normal for these type of dies... Should I just keep going and start using the expander ball on all the brass I have to bump the shoulders back on?

What can I do about the bulge left on the exterior of the case? Just trim it off?

Sorry about the long read and thanks in advance for any thoughts/suggestions.

 

[fishwater]

I just wanted to add, that I have not neck trimmed any of this brass in any way, and to my knowledge it has never been neck trimmed..

 

[MNbogboy]

Without actually seeing your cases two things come to mind...

First of all, the "bulge" on the outside is supposed to be there...The neck has been sized by the neck sizing die and the body die sized the case body excluding the neck....The "bulged" (unsized part) is probably the slight resistance that you feel when you chamber these cases....

I believe the second interior "bulge" may be a problem known as the "doughnut" and I believe it is probably not related to your visual exterior bulge although it usually occurs at the interior junction of the neck and shoulder....Several theories have been brought up on this and other forums as to its cause...

A solution for the removal of course is inside neck reaming....But others on here can give you more info....Personally in 50 years of reloading I have only "suffered" from this problem a couple of times and my resolve was neck reaming only to have them return...Switched brass and the problems disappeared.....

Often soft "flowing" brass has been attributed to the problem and I can agree that the brass I had problems was new and was in my opinion soft.....I am not a firm believer in annealing and there might be a chance that an annealing process may have caused the onset of doughnuts in some of the cases......

Check some of your other sized (but not body sized) cases for the interior swell.....If it is there then you probably have the dreaded doughnut...

Another possibility may be that body sizer is actually causing the brass "flow" at the time of sizing but this is only speculation...Others on here can expand as mentioned before I have only had the problem twice before and cured it with a total brass change....

Good luck,
Randy

 

[fishwater]

Thanks for the reply. My fired cases, as well as my neck sized cases don't have this problem, it only develops after I run them through the body die.

After running a few more brass through the body die, I think I have it figured out.

I am pretty sure it is just brass flowing to the unsized portion of the neck. I guess it's normal, just not normal to me because I had never used this type of die before so I got a little worried.

I started just running the expander ball through them which takes care of the insides of the necks. And as for the outside bulge.. I am just trimming it off... I kind of wanted to neck turn them anyhow..

 

[SidecarFlip]

Sounds to me like the necks are over annealed and too soft but what do I know.

 

[fishwater]

Well, I am guessing you probably know more than me, so thanks for your input.

I did my homework and I am pretty confident in my annealing job, but who knows.

Here are a few pics of what I am talking about. These bullets have been resized in the body die, had the expander button ran through them, and the bulges trimmed off.

They go into the chamber great, have smooth walls on the inside and outside of the necks.

 

[MNbogboy]

I am going with Sidecar on this one because I am now also stumped...The bulge that I pictured on the outside should have blended in with the shoulder...as simply the unsized part of the brass....If the interior and exterior bulge were similar, it appears that they must have been swedged as a result of the two sizing dies.....

I would guess if the end result shoots to your satisfaction that is what matters most no matter what it takes to get there....But it sure seems somewhat out of the norm...

Keep us posted if this happens with all your brass including brass that is not annealed....

good shooting,
Randy

 

[SidecarFlip]

Epilogue....

Annealing is an unexact science, especially when you really have no way of ascertaining just how 'annealed' the necks really are other than templaq which is a good temperature indicator or the old standby method of crushing a case neck with a pair of Vicegrips (needle nose preferred) and noting the springback between a workhardened case and an annealed one....

Of course different brass manufacturers use different alloy blends and that throws in another curve ball. Me. I use the 'Broz' method of semi automatic annealing with a Bench Source Rotary Annealer.

I believe the necks are too soft but only time and another reload will tell.

Good luck, hope they shoot fine for you.