GW Staar
Member
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2009
- Messages
- 3,696
.........As long as it is not machine gun brass, it is good stuff. Brass fired in a machine gun is swelled so much that even a small base die can't reduce it.
I heard that too......but you see, before I heard that, I had already bought a 1000 rounds of .762 LC from Wideners. I wasn't going to to just give up and throw it away, so I bought an RCBS small base .308 die set and set out to proof the myth wrong.....and I did!
Below is a picture of 200 rounds of that MG brass sized with the RCBS small base die.....one time. The brass was first wet tumbled. Once sized, it was trimmed...the primer pockets swaged, uniformed, and the flash holes de-flashed. Every piece passes the plunk test in my Wilson .308 gauge, with nary a single glitch.
You may ask...was it as simple as sizing Winchester or other commercial brass?.....or even LC brass shot out of M14's? Not quite. But this is how I got it done:
First, I made beautiful bling after depriming them all.....using a Thumbler's tumbler in water, Dawn, Lemishine, and S.S. pins.
The first attempt to size that pretty stuff was ..... scary. I used wax...Imperial...the same way I've done for years on "normal" brass. I could NOT size the stuff with that. No stuck cases, no pulled apart heads, but that's only because I quit before the point of no return. Did not push one case all the way through....
Attempt 2 was with Lanolin....better...but still it was harder than hell to push it through and I was sure I was stretching the hell out of them bringing the expander out. It took two hand and a lot of weight bearing down. So I tried another way.....
Attempt 3 was old fashioned RCBS lube on a pad! That actually worked fine on the outside.....but the expander was still a problem using a touch of that lube in the necks.
Attempt 4 was the ticket. Again RCBS lube on a pad, and dry white mica powder on the insides of the necks. It's still a little harder to size than commercial, but not bad. I thought how can this be? So I tried imperial one more time....and almost stuck it. Forget that. BTW, the brass from attempts 1,2 and 3 went to the scrap pile. Again....all the brass from Attempt 4 passed the plunk test in the Wilson gauge with ease.
Also BTW.....someone told me about the tried and true STP for sizing tough brass.....it did work, but the RCBS water-based pad lube was way easier to clean up with. STP is too messy for me.
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