.357 Sig Case Resizing

I'm wondering if anyone else has notice this (not that there's many of us reloading .357 Sig).

New Starling brass appears to have the case shoulder closer to the head (therefore farther from the mouth) than my case gauge suggests it should be. This means more neck, and the possibility for more next tension. They still chamber and fire just fine like this. Likely because the case with seat of either the mouth or the shoulder, based on which one hits first in the chamber.

When I resize fired brass, I set the shoulder so the case fits the go/no-go case gauge, but between the powder residue coating the inside of the neck (despite tumbling it's never like new), residual case lube, and the reduced neck length, I tend to see prefired cases are more likely to suffer bullet setback.

I'm wondering if maybe resizing the shoulder farther towards the case head is a better way to go. However, I realize this may cause the case to wear more quickly at the shoulder. Any thought or experience with this?

 

Actually, what I've noticed with the residue on prefired cases (including .357, .41, and. 44 mag) is that bullets seat just a little easier than with new brass. In fact, I had some coated lead bullets that I loaded into new brass, and saw the coating breaking off from friction even with a good flare to the mouth. No such issue with prefired though. It's been my experience that the residue makes the inside of the case slightly slick.

 

I don't cast my own. I just buy from SNS, MBC, or similar places.

 

Somewhat hard to accurately measure, though it seems to be fairly close. However, here are some pics of a resized case with my case gauge.


And here are the same shots with a piece of new brass.



Comparing the two directly, things don't look very different. But the gauge tells a slightly different story.

I decided to adjust my resizing die. It's bottomed out now and reads between the two. Perhaps that will work a little better, but it should work at least as well as how I've been resizing up until now.

 

I'm dry tumbling, and probably won't be changing that any time soon. Unfortunately. But that is likely part of the issue.

 

I have tried coated bullets yet. May have to try, just for curiosity.

 

Just to be clear, when I was talking about coated bullets, that was for the magnum cartridges. With .357 Sig I only use copper jacketed (or just recently, solid copper).

 

Interesting. I don't remember hearing much about that until now. But perhaps I should look into wet tumbling.

 

I certainly had been washing my hands. After every aspect of reloading.

The lid on my tumbler has slots in it. So on my way home I bought a big plastic tote (with lid) to put the whole tumbler inside.

I'm also going to stop using the center hub of the tumbler to vibrate media out of the cases as I pull them out. I'd been doing this since I began reloading a few years ago - lightly holding each case upside down whilst pressed to the hub - and obviously the tumbler has to be on for the vibrations to help, which means dust. I'll do it differently from now on, and I'll get some car polish too.

Thanks to everyone looking out for my health.