Case Prep for Novice and Experienced (in case you're an OldGuy like me)

[Pierre]

Case Prep
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The first step is lubing, and we use Castor Oil. Yeah, I inow. There are many hundreds of threads and thousands of posts all over the net about "the" best lube. Want to waste your money? Go for it. None of them beat Castor Oil. Its cheap and takes no more than 3 drops to do 100 cases. We line a shallow baking pan with foil, a few drops of Castor Oil, roll them around a couple of times and that's it. This is just for a demo. We ususally do 100 at a time.



We use a side bench mounted neck lube brush that has a miniscule amount of Castor Oil on the bristles applied with fingers.

Resize and de-cap the primer, then...... remove the expander rod. Resize with a bushing die of the right diameter. We have a seperate press for each process, but if you don't you'll need to go through the sizing process twice, once with the Expander/De-capper and once with the bushing die. We use Redding Micro's for both processes.



A quick wipe.............


And on to the Wilson Trimmer. Use what works for you, but whatever it is, be certain that there is not one iota of variance case to case.



Continued
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Continued


Ream and Champfer gently. There's no need to be aggressive with the brass.




Insert primers. For this process we use the Forster and it's be dedicated to two processes, one of which is primer seating.


I've purposely ignored primer pocket truing and I'll explain why later.
For projectile seating we use the Redding Micro and that, for us, is critical.


We have electronics, but for precision reloading we use a very long I beam scale.

Next will come seat depths and primer pocket truing.
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Latigo and P
An'' ole' Brer' Rabbit...... he set in de bushes..... he watch an' he wait... lay low an' he don' say nuffin'.

www.swissproductsusa.com

and.................. Projectile Prep
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Anything out to 200 we won't necessarily do this, but beyond that range we would.

This is our process. Your's may vary, but this has proven itself for us.

Projectile prep:

We only use Berger VLDs, but Sierra SMKs work really great too.
Our method is to begin with meplat trimming. We use the Hoover. Buy the sort that indexes on the ogive, not the base of the bullet. That's going to be very important when you cross reference/compare actual seat depth from the ogive to COAL, cartridge to cartridge later.

Untrimmed



Trimming process.



Trimmed



We then use a Hoover Pointer to reshape and center the hollow point and we taper it down to an opening that's approximately twice the thickness of the jacket wall.

Pointing





Pointed correctly



This is only the beginning of our overall case/projectile prep process.
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[DizzyJ]

Interesting prep!
Thanks for sharing!

I've never felt the need to trim or point the bullets, but I've read about people doing it.

 

[Caveman Jim]

Thanks for that tip with the Hoover Pointer.

I bought 250) .308 125 grain hollow points that were Surplus and pulled bullets to use for supersonic 300 Blackout loads. They had wax on them so I looked on the net to try and find out how the best way to do it without actually having to touch each one with a brass brush.
I came across a post that said it was okay to put them into a vibratory tumblr so in they went & my how good it worked but the HP tips were not true anymore. So they sit in their box till I figured out the best way to take care of this problem.

 

[Pierre]

Jim, if you look at those tips right out of the box with a magnifying glass you'll see that almost none of the HP projectiles have uniform meplats. Even the most expensive Match projectiles have slightly uneven meplats. You'll need to trim them before re-pointing them.

 

[Caveman Jim]

I bought these for testing purposes because they were so cheap but the next batch I get, if I can find them, I will definitely take the time to trim and repoint them for HD purpose.

 

[Alan12013]

I would like to also add something that I recently picked up. I was noticing that I could load a case to 100 percent and I'd fill 10 rounds like that but some would make noise when I shook them and others wouldn't even seat the bullet to the uniform length because of capacity variance. This, in my opinion, has a large impact in ES and maybe even BR level accuracy. I've found Hornady and Norma brass to be of good quality. Winchester bagged brass is horrible. I will prep my brass to the point where a primer is in and then I will fill it to the top with powder and transfer to another, I then sort based off of capacity and NOT based off of case weight. Not sure if this is a good trick as I've yet to do a Litz styled test but the logic is there.

 

[tac]

Am I reading something here I don't understand? The GL knows my capacity for comprehension goes down with the setting sun, and it's gone 9:30 here in East Anglia, so please bear with me.

You just wrote that you fill a case to the top with powder?

All cases?

All powders?

Why aren't you dead yet?

tac

 

[DizzyJ]

I would like to also add something that I recently picked up. I was noticing that I could load a case to 100 percent and I'd fill 10 rounds like that but some would make noise when I shook them and others wouldn't even seat the bullet to the uniform length because of capacity variance. This, in my opinion, has a large impact in ES and maybe even BR level accuracy. I've found Hornady and Norma brass to be of good quality. Winchester bagged brass is horrible. I will prep my brass to the point where a primer is in and then I will fill it to the top with powder and transfer to another, I then sort based off of capacity and NOT based off of case weight. Not sure if this is a good trick as I've yet to do a Litz styled test but the logic is there.

If you size the cases, trim to length, then weigh them, you'll know which ones have more case capacity than the others and you can segregate them into different weight lots.

It's an easy method to use. More weight means less internal capacity and vice versa.

 

[tac]

Ah, you don't actually LOAD a bullet on top of the filled case, right? Perhaps you'd be kind enough to an older guy and make that clear. I have visions of you filling the case with powder loading the bullet by heaving on the press until it fits, and shooting it.

All my cases for one calibre are one brand, five hundred of each, so they just get rotated over a perio of a couple of years

tac, reloading since 1967.

 

[DizzyJ]

Ah, you don't actually LOAD a bullet on top of the filled case, right? Perhaps you'd be kind enough to an older guy and make that clear. I have visions of you filling the case with powder loading the bullet by heaving on the press until it fits, and shooting it.

All my cases for one calibre are one brand, five hundred of each, so they just get rotated over a perio of a couple of years

tac, reloading since 1967.

Agreed. Segregate by headstamp and lot #, then weigh (if you're shooting for long range accuracy).

 

[Alan12013]

Am I reading something here I don't understand? The GL knows my capacity for comprehension goes down with the setting sun, and it's gone 9:30 here in East Anglia, so please bear with me.

You just wrote that you fill a case to the top with powder?

All cases?

All powders?

Why aren't you dead yet?

tac

No just to test the capacity. I have weight and lot sorted before and found NO correlation to capacity, at least with the cases I have dealt with. It can be sand if you want but I just use something big like h4350. I dump it out once I get cases sorted by capacity and then I fill them with the exact charge weight I want. For instance I can fill to the brim one case then dump that same powder amount (to test capacity) into another case (one that could even weigh the same) and it would only fill it to the neck. My point is that you could have 5 fully prepped brass with primer that all weigh the same and if you have a load that is technically a 90percent case fill charge, in one case it could be 85percent and 95 percent in another. For loads near 100 percent capacity it creates problems. Like 58.8gr h4831sc (guessing here) could be my accuracy load so I load up 5 cases with 58.8 grains and I find out that one fills up the brass to about 90percent full and I can hear powder shaking around when I shake it, and in the next one I can't even seat the bullet to the depth I want because the case is too full with powder; even though it's the same charge weight.

 

[Pierre]

Gents, I neglected to mention that when we're weighing cases for precision loading, ALL of the cases are from the same Mfg.
For our .308 long range loads, we only use LC/LR cases from the same year/lot numbers. I've come across a number of long time reloaders who have never come across the LC/LR cases.

 

[DizzyJ]

No just to test the capacity. I have weight and lot sorted before and found NO correlation to capacity, at least with the cases I have dealt with. It can be sand if you want but I just use something big like h4350. I dump it out once I get cases sorted by capacity and then I fill them with the exact charge weight I want. For instance I can fill to the brim one case then dump that same powder amount (to test capacity) into another case (one that could even weigh the same) and it would only fill it to the neck. My point is that you could have 5 fully prepped brass with primer that all weigh the same and if you have a load that is technically a 90percent case fill charge, in one case it could be 85percent and 95 percent in another. For loads near 100 percent capacity it creates problems. Like 58.8gr h4831sc (guessing here) could be my accuracy load so I load up 5 cases with 58.8 grains and I find out that one fills up the brass to about 90percent full and I can hear powder shaking around when I shake it, and in the next one I can't even seat the bullet to the depth I want because the case is too full with powder; even though it's the same charge weight.

That makes NO sense to me whatsoever. If the cases are all the same length, same manufacturer, same lot # and sized, the only place for metal to go, is to the inside. The outside dimensions should all be the exact same after sizing.

Powder can sometimes stack up irregularly in a case of not trickled correctly. This is the only reason I can think of that would cause what you're describing.

 

[tac]

No just to test the capacity. .

Yeah, I figured that one out. I really just wanted you to say that it wasn't to actually reload, just to test the volume, which you had NOT mentioned. Y'see, a good while ago a friend of mine and I tried to keep a guy alive who'd been hit by fragments of an exploding cylinder from a much more than double load of Bullseye. He died just as we ran through the doors of ER. It sure is hard to put a tourniquet on the neck.

tac

 

[Alan12013]

That makes NO sense to me whatsoever. If the cases are all the same length, same manufacturer, same lot # and sized, the only place for metal to go, is to the inside. The outside dimensions should all be the exact same after sizing.

Powder can sometimes stack up irregularly in a case of not trickled correctly. This is the only reason I can think of that would cause what you're describing.

Go buy Hornady or Winchester brass in a case the size of a 270 or larger and see for yourself. Perhaps my results are isolated, but it would be a large segment sample. Maybe it's because I'm using brass larger then a 308 or 223... Brass can add weight in strange places. I've weight sorted many times only to find a variance in capacity same as before.

Yeah, I figured that one out. I really just wanted you to say that it wasn't to actually reload, just to test the volume, which you had NOT mentioned. Y'see, a good while ago a friend of mine and I tried to keep a guy alive who'd been hit by fragments of an exploding cylinder from a much more than double load of Bullseye. He died just as we ran through the doors of ER. It sure is hard to put a tourniquet on the neck.

tac

That's pretty sad. Fragmenting anything is scary. I remember a kid got badly injured with an airgun co2 cartridge he was messing with.

 

[DizzyJ]

Go buy Hornady or Winchester brass in a case the size of a 270 or larger and see for yourself. Perhaps my results are isolated, but it would be a large segment sample. Maybe it's because I'm using brass larger then a 308 or 223... Brass can add weight in strange places. I've weight sorted many times only to find a variance in capacity same as before.

That's pretty sad. Fragmenting anything is scary. I remember a kid got badly injured with an airgun co2 cartridge he was messing with.

Is it at all possible the powder was not stacking consistently from case to case?

I know larger kernals can bridge and bunch up, especially with larger volumes.

A friend of mine who shoots F-class and has won many gold medals sorts by weight and his ES are usually in the single digits!

 

[Alan12013]

Is it at all possible the powder was not stacking consistently from case to case?

I know larger kernals can bridge and bunch up, especially with larger volumes.

A friend of mine who shoots F-class and has won many gold medals sorts by weight and his ES are usually in the single digits!

So as to not totally hijack this thread with my problem I will send a PM with what I have encountered.

 

[Member 5605]

My case prep involves me picking up all sorts of brass from the ground at the range.

Then I clean and inspect it.

90% is golden and it's rightfully sized and set aside for future use.

I may have skipped a couple steps.

 

[Pierre]

Take a primed case....... put a few drops of oil in the bottom......... shake it out..... chamber it in your rifle or handgun....... pull the trigger and see what happens.

 

[tac]

Uh, lemme guess. It stops the primer from squeaking, right?

tac