"Houston, we have a problem"

[Hoot]

I want all the pictures!!

Its a teaching process for all of us!

Here's an excerpt from a more lengthy post paralleling this one over on beyond556.com:

...snip...

In the next image, you can see the narrowing imparted to the new brass after sizing them:



Back home, I tumbled all the brass, inspected them for any damage and burnished the powder residue out of the insides of the necks. I set one aside as a reference and ran the remaining 47 through the resizing/decapping process again using the same setup and procedure as earlier.

When I went to load my next experiments, that is when I ran into the problem already explained. Close examination of the reference cases revealed what may be the problem.

In the next image, you can see a new case alongside a fired, unsized case. The ring did not "iron out" from shooting.



Sizing the fired cases again exacerbated the ring to the point where when I went to seat my next experiments they seized when the bearing surface of the bullet reached that ring. I doubt fire forming those damaged cases will bring them back to normal, So I'm writing them off as a costly lesson.

The next batch will be initially sized by adjusting the sizing die down to where it just touches the shoulder and locking it down there as opposed to where it firmly engages the shell holder, a turn further down from that point.

Thanks to everyone who responded. Hopefully, you will not hear of this problem reoccurring as I learn the do's and dont's of reloading this caliber.

One person asked what the resulting OD neck size was if I just sized without the decapper. That figure is .2855, which I personally feel is a bit much for a .300 neck chamber, but that's what I got with the Hornady die. I am ever so slowly lapping the neck portion of the die open to more like what the new brass come in at. That being .2883. Doing so may make it easier for the expander to create an ID closer to .262. I am going slow, having spent the entire evening getting it up to .2863 when I quit for bedtime, which is now past. 04:30 comes pretty early. More tomorrow evening...

Hoot