tightgroup tiger
Member
I have had issues with CBC brass like your having as I have had with Win, Speer, Federal and all the rest.
I use a auto-progressive and to get rid of the problem I had to use a lot of spray lube to ease the re-sizing process and tumble them after they were loaded to get the lube off.
I took someone elses advise and used my hornady powder check die to take the flex out of the shell plate by setting it up as opposite to the sizing die as I could to touch the shell plate the same as my re-sizing die does, to stabilize the shell plate on the up stroke.
After I started using spray lube and tumbling afterwards my OAL came back into spec. My OAL was bouncing all over the place as much as .010-.015 also. I found out that sizing die was deforming the point of the plated bullets because the seating stem of my die didn't fit the profile of the truncated bullets, the plated bullets were to soft to stand the extra strain of pressing them into thicker brass. the seating depth was correct but the bullet was reading all over the place with my dial caliper. I am loading Berry's plated bullets so they would be softer then small balls so this may not be in line with your problems.
Looking back, I think the biggest thing that helped my problem was using the case lube to ease the re-sizing process.
Something else that was plaguing me was that my 9mm shells were shot to many times and they had work hardened which also make them hard to resize and again causes what I described above. That also make them hard to resize and could cause deflection problems without the case lube no matter who made them.
I do mic all my 9mm brass when I get a load of range brass and pick out anything under .742 since with my equipment, shorter than that is out of the range of my neck sizing die for flaring and that causes more problems. I trim anything over .752 but I don't know if I would have to do this because I've never had a 9mm case that was to long to chamber. I have shot up to .755 with no problems but I try to keep all my 9mm brass within .010"tolerance. Since I have done this, my press has ran flawlessly and to me, running flawless is priceless.
I use a auto-progressive and to get rid of the problem I had to use a lot of spray lube to ease the re-sizing process and tumble them after they were loaded to get the lube off.
I took someone elses advise and used my hornady powder check die to take the flex out of the shell plate by setting it up as opposite to the sizing die as I could to touch the shell plate the same as my re-sizing die does, to stabilize the shell plate on the up stroke.
After I started using spray lube and tumbling afterwards my OAL came back into spec. My OAL was bouncing all over the place as much as .010-.015 also. I found out that sizing die was deforming the point of the plated bullets because the seating stem of my die didn't fit the profile of the truncated bullets, the plated bullets were to soft to stand the extra strain of pressing them into thicker brass. the seating depth was correct but the bullet was reading all over the place with my dial caliper. I am loading Berry's plated bullets so they would be softer then small balls so this may not be in line with your problems.
Looking back, I think the biggest thing that helped my problem was using the case lube to ease the re-sizing process.
Something else that was plaguing me was that my 9mm shells were shot to many times and they had work hardened which also make them hard to resize and again causes what I described above. That also make them hard to resize and could cause deflection problems without the case lube no matter who made them.
I do mic all my 9mm brass when I get a load of range brass and pick out anything under .742 since with my equipment, shorter than that is out of the range of my neck sizing die for flaring and that causes more problems. I trim anything over .752 but I don't know if I would have to do this because I've never had a 9mm case that was to long to chamber. I have shot up to .755 with no problems but I try to keep all my 9mm brass within .010"tolerance. Since I have done this, my press has ran flawlessly and to me, running flawless is priceless.
