Please help, reloading question......

Status
Not open for further replies.
B

Bob243

New member
Hello,

I ran into an issue which has me stumped... I went to order some more brass for my 243, and when I ordered them all thay had left was Nickel Plated Brass, so that what I got. I did my usual prep to the cases, ran them through the neck sizer, de-burred the mouth of the cases inside and out, charged them with powder and began to seat the tips. This is where I am having the problem, the tips are so tight they are diging into the tips and putting a huge ring in the tip there it hits the seating die. I measured my expander ball on the expansion die it is .243", I measured a tip to verify my measurement also .243" I measure the inside of the cases I get .241". I also tried a diferent tip (make and weight) with the same result. I am sure I didn't miss any when resizing them, is it just that the nickel is that much harder? Will this create too much chamber pressure?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreaciated...



I run my loads one before the recommended max load in my Sierra book

This particuler load is;

87g Hornady VMax
34.5g IMR3031
Remington brass
Federal 215 magnum primer
Overall lenth 2.640"


Thanks In Advance;
Bob Meier
rmeier@epix.net
 
Hello Bob:
I've never reloaded for the .243 Win.,using the nickel plated brass. But I have used .338 Win. Mag. that is plated, with never a problem.You mentioned you had checked the dia. of your sizer, check the outer dia. of the neck of the case, according to my different manuals it should be .276.
Keep me posted as to what you find.
Thanks
Tim
 
That may be part of the answer, I checked it with my mic and they were .273, .003 undersize. I can't figure out why the resize die didn't take care of it, they were quite a bit tougher to necksize than regular brass, which is why I ran them through twice.

As far as lube for the expander and the case I have always used this can of graphite that I have, that has always worked fine, what can I be missing?

Thanks,
Bob
 
Hello Bob:
I looked back at you original question, and found that you had prepped the cases by chamfering the case mouth both inside and out. When loading new or once-fired cases, this is required to remove the sharp inside edges of the case mouth. You might look back at this procedure to see if this is causing the problem with the bullet seating process.
Hope this helps.
Tim
 
Bob, do you have your seater die adjusted to crimp? If so, maybe you are crimping the case mouth before the bullet is fully seated.

Let us know how you solve this one...
 
Here is what I found, after doing more research into the reason for the mouth of the case being .003 smaller than what they should be, I ran them through again, de-burred them again and ran them over the expander a couple more times without puttng them through the top sizing portion of the die, everything works great, a little tighter than usuall but not an alarming amount, the ring around the top if the tip is not as bad as it was. So this raised more couriosity of why this would happen, so I grabbed one of my "rejects" from the box ( brass that is damaged from new which is reaguler brass not nickel) and resized it no problem, so I measured the thickness of the brass, the Nickel brass which I am using is .002" thicker, so my theory is that since it is thicker it gets collapsed that much more when running it through the top of the sizeing die, and the return pass over the expander is not enough to size it to the proper diameter maybe due to the extra hardness of the brass and the extra passes over the expander ball make enough difference.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction...

As a side note, If anyone knows where I could order some PMC brass I would be greatfull, the dealers and places online I have looked either don't carry it or are out of it with no clue on when they will get it back in. from past experiences I cannot say enough good things about PMC brass.

Thanks again,
Bob Meier
rmeier@epix.net
 
For the past 30 years I've been using mostly Winchester brass, and a few boxes of Norma. The Norma (old stuff, now...) seems to be a smidgin softer than the Winchester. There has not been any reason for not to use Remington brass; it just sorta worked out that way. I've had zero problems in any phase of the reloading, and regularly get groups of three shots hidden by a dime. At worst, 3/4" at 100 yards.

Bob243, your load is a nice, mild one.

And I'm gonna move this to the Handloading Forum.

:), Art
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top