Draw lines in case mouth. Affect accuracy?

N

NickGroves

Inactive
Long story short, i didnt get enough lube in the case mouth and when I ran my expander ball threw it left some really fine draw lines in some cases. One case was a little worse than the rest and i set this one aside and will not use it.

How will the rest of these cases affect accuracy durring my load development?

Am i being to picky?
 
You are, as far as I can tell, worried about nothing, but maybe you ought to run them through the die again if you believe that they stretched. Those scratches won't affect the bullet hold on the brass. They won't affect entry into the bore. The bore is going to pound he gilding metal bullet into absolute smoothness.The cases, when reused, will iron out until there is no actual damage of any significance, even though they may be still visible. You accuracy, I believe, will not suffer at all, nada, zilcharoonies, because that damage is still in a straight line. The rifling in your bore will Almost certainly cause far more damage.

Don't worry.
 
I ran my expander ball threw it left some really fine draw lines in some cases.
Click to expand...

If the sizing plug was smooth where did the lines come from? I have the RCBS case prep center with 5 stations. When prepping cases I run a brush through the neck, then I have a limit; I will not allow the sizing plug to make that squeaking sound when pulled through. There are those that believe pulling the plug through th3 neck increases case head space; my cases do not have head space so I have an exemption.

F. Guffey
 
Brian, thats kinda what i was thinking.. But ive been known to over analyse a thing or two.. hahaha. Just wanted a second opinion being im new to reloading.

Guffey, i wish i could tell you honestly. On my worst case (it happened to be the last case) i removed to expander ball yet again to make sure i didnt have brass buildup or anything on the ball. All it has was some oil residue on it. I did even go as far as running a 900grit stone in the direction of pull over the expander ball to make sure there weren't any high spots on it that i wasnt seeing. Nothing.

Also, no squeeking that you speak of. All actions were actually quite smooth.
 
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One thing to check. Did you actually check those cases and verify that every one of them carried the same scratches, and check your new brass for scratches? New brass may not show it, but scorched and then scraped brass may expose marks that were already there. If your button is smooth and no excess work was felt, maybe it wasn't even caused by the expander, and we're created during manufacturing.

https://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=74ssMmD_tXE

Not actually rifle brass, but it's going to give you a hint. The only remaining step will be to form the bottleneck, and expand it. It will be expanded because that will draw the internal wall to proper size, then it can be measured on the outside to confirm that the sized brass was not too thick.
 
Brian, i didnt look at the mouth very close before running it threw the die, how ever, it is virgin lapua brass (some case mouths were out of round from the box so i decided to make sure everything was consistant) but the first 50 i ran threw show very small signs of the draw lines, the last 50 showed more. I did clean the die before use and i sprayed some lube into the die and on the expander ball before use.

I did send hornady an email to see what they had to say or that they could recommend i try. No questions asked they are sending me a new expander ball. So we will see how it works.
 
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