Hey there everyone,
I'm reloading for my dad's 270 using once-fired brass. Some of it was shot through his current rifle, some from his previous rifle.
I recently forayed into the salt bath annealing arena. It was all annealed at 500 degrees C for 5 seconds after being once-fired. The first issues I noticed were afterwords in resizing. I used a Redding S series bushing die with the bushing and expander removed (in essence just a body die) so I could resize the neck with a Lee Collet die as his brass cases have not been neck turned. His chamber size is 2.049 so my goal was to set all the shoulders back to 2.047. Most of the brass (from his previous rifle) initially was around 2.052. When resizing, there was a fair bit of variance in the results. Most were in the range of 2.046-2.048 after being resized, but a handful of times it kicked brass out at 2.044 or less. All cases were lightly lubed with the Redding Imperial Die wax. Several times, thinking it was accumulation of lube in the die, I wiped it out but it still randomly occurred.
I test seated a handful of bullets to check the bullet tension produced by the Lee Collet die. I am getting a tremendous amount of runout after seating. Case runout after the Lee Collet die has all been .002 or less. After seating the bullets using a RCBS comp seater die, I'm getting runout anywhere between .005-.01, which is unacceptable for me. I've tried using a standard RCBS seater die, with a little better results, but not much. I also tried sizing some of the case necks with the Redding S series die with the bushing in place, but the seating results are the same.
The bullets seat easily, if not too easily, so I'm guessing neck tension needs to be adjusted. Is this symptomatic of over-annealed brass...? Getting slightly pushed around when the bullet is seated? This was slightly less than the recommended temp for salt bath annealing.
Any advice or help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
I'm reloading for my dad's 270 using once-fired brass. Some of it was shot through his current rifle, some from his previous rifle.
I recently forayed into the salt bath annealing arena. It was all annealed at 500 degrees C for 5 seconds after being once-fired. The first issues I noticed were afterwords in resizing. I used a Redding S series bushing die with the bushing and expander removed (in essence just a body die) so I could resize the neck with a Lee Collet die as his brass cases have not been neck turned. His chamber size is 2.049 so my goal was to set all the shoulders back to 2.047. Most of the brass (from his previous rifle) initially was around 2.052. When resizing, there was a fair bit of variance in the results. Most were in the range of 2.046-2.048 after being resized, but a handful of times it kicked brass out at 2.044 or less. All cases were lightly lubed with the Redding Imperial Die wax. Several times, thinking it was accumulation of lube in the die, I wiped it out but it still randomly occurred.
I test seated a handful of bullets to check the bullet tension produced by the Lee Collet die. I am getting a tremendous amount of runout after seating. Case runout after the Lee Collet die has all been .002 or less. After seating the bullets using a RCBS comp seater die, I'm getting runout anywhere between .005-.01, which is unacceptable for me. I've tried using a standard RCBS seater die, with a little better results, but not much. I also tried sizing some of the case necks with the Redding S series die with the bushing in place, but the seating results are the same.
The bullets seat easily, if not too easily, so I'm guessing neck tension needs to be adjusted. Is this symptomatic of over-annealed brass...? Getting slightly pushed around when the bullet is seated? This was slightly less than the recommended temp for salt bath annealing.
Any advice or help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.