HBN is LOL

9

9MMand223only

New member
OK fellas, as you know, I test things. So I bought a canister of HBN. I never used it before, but comfortably used Moly and other coatings.

So get this. I do up the HBN perfect on a bunch of 77 gr SMK in 5.56. BB's, tumbler, they look perfect. I set necks at .223, so only .001 of neck tension, which translates to about 20 PSI to seat them, which is very low.

I seat the non HBN bullets, they seat around 20 PSI pressure on arbor. I then take a HBN bullet, that I measured still has .224 diameter, same as non coated, I try and seat it..

50....80...100...120...it takes about 200 PSI of pressure to seat it, and the first one CRUSHED the neck it was so much pressure. I mean you literally had to put all your body weight, to get it to go in, and it just would not. then CRUSH.

So ok...I am thinking people will tell me all kinds of things...so I already know. SO I start doing this...with next many..
  • Wipe off HBN so it doesn't look that frosty, but you can barely see specs, and it feels slippery still.
  • Wax the neck
  • Hornady One shot the neck
  • Hornady one shot the neck AND the HBN bullet
  • Brass brush, heavily, then nylon brush and basically polish the neck
  • resized neck to .224, almost ZERO neck tension
  • tried another brand of brass
    LASTLY put HBN with alchohol swabbed on neck. Did nothing.

Nothing worked, although freshly SPRAYING the bullet, which I think eliminatd a lot of HBN, and then swabbing the neck with ONE SHOT, helped...that one was only about 140 PSI to seat,and it CRUSHED the ogive badly.

even the damn .224 diameter brass would not go in.

what in the damn heck is going on with this crap. Its almost like your trying to push in something down against compressed air. Like the air inside the case is stopping the bullet from going down, its super weird.

I read that different brands of brass work, and some don't. I have nearly every brand of brass. All brass I used was BRAND NEW.

I have tried 15 different methods to seat this crap, even wiping it off so hard core, you can't even barely see anyting under a magnifying glass. Still does it.

What in the hell is going on. I will try another 10 brands of brass, and if that doesn't work, I guess I can't do an HBN review for the site. This is literally insane. The bullet feels SUPER SLICK. the MOMENT you try and seat the bullet even 20k down, it locks up like you are hyrolocking your engine. It feels like their is massive air pressure pushing UP. I get this feeling because it sort of rebounds a little. I have many presses. Tried on 3.

This crap is the biggest hassle I ever seen. haha. Joke is on me for sure.
 
9mmand 223only, don't give up. Recall Thomas Edison supposedly failed 10,000 times before he invented the light bulb. I read somewhere that he said, Every time I failed, I learned something."
 
Its easy. So I can warn people about it. It worked with 1 brand of brass. and it worked with used and not clean brass. Still harder neck tension, but under 100 lbs at least
 
Try one with an empty case without a primer to confirm it isn't air compression. Pull one and confirm all the lube is scraped off the bullet. I discovered that happening with moly long ago. I had to dull the inside edges of the case mouths after trimming to prevent it.

I am guessing you have freshly exposed, oxide-free gilding metal that tries to form a metal-on-metal bond with the neck. Are your cases wet-tumbled and all shiny and smooth inside? I've heard other reports of friction increases with bullets seated in squeaky-clean and polished brass. If this is what you have, take a clean bore brush and turn it inside the neck a couple of times to see if roughing it up a little prevents the problem.
 
Hello, thank you for your input.

I found what worked. (I am only using "new" brass BTW)

I expanded all the necks to .2235. I tried 5 brands of brass, they all do it.

when I expand the neck so it has .0005 neck tension, it seats with about 80 lbs of pressure only. LOL only.

But no dents in ogive and I seated them all just fine. I also used Q tip and applied Hornady One Shot case Lube and let it dry to the inside of the necks. That helped a lot.

So It looks like I have enough to do a summary judgement and review on this. it will be up on the site as soon as I go in about a week or so.

Also taking a nail and putting a "Scratch" up the neck works too.

I think what it was air compression, its insanely sealed when you do the HBN. You can see it in the pores of the bullet up close with 10x magnification. The reason I think the .0005 neck tension worked, is the layer of One shot was enough to cause something other than metal to be pushed. If that even makes sense.
 
Yes, if the scratch works that suggests a seal, but atmospheric pressure is 14.7 psi at sea level. If your bullet squeezed the air space between the powder grains inside the case in half, it would go to 29.4 psi. Multiplied by the bullet base area, that comes to 1.15 lbs of added seating force required. So something else is going on here.

G. David Tubb came up with hBN coating originally. You might write him and ask if he's heard of anything like this happening. Large enough particles of the stuff might cause the issue. Where did you get the hBN?
 
Hi. this is all over the web of people having same issue, in varying degrees. I found a couple guys who tried it, and with .002 neck tension space, the pressure to seat was so high, it also collapsed the neck. Can you imagine how much pressure to collapse the neck? That is a lot.

on the scratch one, it seated easier, but still very hard. Considering it was near double to triple the force of non HBN bullet. So air compression has PART reason to do with it, but not majority, as you have guessed.
 
Where are they sourcing the hBN? I'm wondering if this is a grade issue, as came up with moly coating and corrosion. If someone is selling a wrong grade, the particles not oriented with their layers parallel to the surface could act like fine grit.

This issue arises with graphite, which can be abrasive under some conditions.
 
You would almost think that much pressure would unseat primers or possibly even pop them out. Would be interesting to rig up a shell casing and hook it to a air compressor to see how much pressure it would take to have an affect on primer depth, or to just pop them even.
 
Based on their cross-sectional area, it will take just under 42 psi to apply 1 pound of unseating force to a small primer, and 29 psi for a large primer. Primer seating force can vary a good bit with the primer pocket and primer dimensions.

CAUTION! Wear gloves and eye and ear protection if you try the following!

Seat a live primer in a case (an expended one can't be counted on to match the numbers). Take one of the Lee decapping rods or pull the decapper out of one of your sizing dies and set it upside down (decapping pin up) in the center of a bathroom scale. Set the primed case over it and get the pin started in the flash hole. Watch the scale while pushing down on the case until it decaps. Note how many pounds of force that took. Multiply that number of pounds by either 42 or 29 depending on which size the primer was. The result will be the pressure required to decap that particular type in your particular case.
 
Unclenick said:
Based on their cross-sectional area, it will take just under 42 psi to apply 1 pound of unseating force to a small primer, and 29 psi for a large primer. Primer seating force can vary a good bit with the primer pocket and primer dimensions.

CAUTION! Wear gloves and eye and ear protection if you try the following!

Seat a live primer in a case (an expended one can't be counted on to match the numbers). Take one of the Lee decapping rods or pull the decapper out of one of your sizing dies and set it upside down (decapping pin up) in the center of a bathroom scale. Set the primed case over it and get the pin started in the flash hole. Watch the scale while pushing down on the case until it decaps. Note how many pounds of force that took. Multiply that number of pounds by either 42 or 29 depending on which size the primer was. The result will be the pressure required to decap that particular type in your particular case.
Click to expand...
I just happen to have some primed.223 brass in the bin waiting to be loaded so I gave it a try. I have a small scale that only goes up to 12 pounds and I exceeded that by a pretty good margin. I pushed as hard as I could and didn’t even budge the primer. Based on the figures you’ve given it looks like primers unseating would not even come close to being a problem.
 
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