Case Neck Brushes?

[berettaprofessor]

I was rereading the NRA's Guide to Reloading recently and realized, since it made a big deal out of using a case neck brush to clean the necks of bottleneck cases, that I may be missing an important step in case preparation for rifle cartridges. I learned to reload handgun cartridges at an NRA-sponsored reloading course, and proceeded on to 223, 243, 300, and 308 on my own. The ABC's of reloading barely mentions the use of case neck brushes and so, somewhere, I missed it, and, while deburring, chamfering, and lubing the necks after vibratory cleaning, I've never noticed that much debris there. So, two questions:

1) Is case neck brushing/cleaning a standard or occasional step of your case preparation of bottleneck cartridges?

2) Case neck brushes are almost indistinguishable in pictures on Brownell's and MidwayUSA to the brass and nylon brushes used for barrel cleaning. Can they be used interchangably assuming the use of appropriate sizes?

 

[243winxb]

I use the RCBS case neck brush to lube/clean the inside of the necks, every loading. No barrel cleaning.
You dont want any solvent to contact the brass.

I guess you could clean the brush with Isopropyl Alcohol and use them for both neck and bore.

 

[Blue68f100]

If your cleaning your brass with the Wet SS systems you don't need to do it twice. If you got some new/clean brushes they work just fine. The main thing is that you don't want anything that will effect neck tension, lube/oil. BUT if you used some kind of lube on the inside of the necks when you sized, it needs to be cleaned off, unless its the dry graphite. This is where it's nice to have carbide expanders or neck/bushing dies so the expander is not needed.

With that said it's not really necessary unless you going for the most accuracy you can get. For general plinking loads it may not see a difference.

 

[frankmako]

This is what I do with my rifle brass. After firing I drop them in the tumbler to knock the junk off. Then I take a case neck brush with case lube on it a run inside each case. Then i deprime and wet clean the brass. They are ready to reload for the next match.

 

[Walkalong]

Use case neck brushes for brushing/lubing necks and don't use them for anything else. Keep you bore brushes in your cleaning kit and use them only for cleaning bores.

 

[Muddydogs]

I dry tumble my cases with Nu Finish car polish in the media and also lube the inside of my case necks with Imperial Case Sizing Wax as needed during sizing, generally about every 5ish case neck. Every once in a while I get a little heavy handed with the Imperial on a q-tip or don't get all the polish clumps mixed in the media before I dump the brass in so on the last station on my RCBS case prep center I have a nylon neck brush spinning. I run each case over the neck brush as a way to make sure theirs no media stuck in the case, it doesn't happen very often but every once in a while I will pull some media out of the case which is my indicator to investigate further. Running the case neck over a nylon brush isn't hurting anything and takes no time at all but is of no real benefit in the general reloading process.

I don't like to use the brush for lubing my case necks as there's no real control over the amount of lube between cases and I don't want the lube past the case neck, I have found that a light roll of a q-tip in the Imperial then a light roll around the inside of the neck gives me just the right amount of neck lube and cleans out completely when tumbled in corn cob. Sometimes I get carried away with the application and its usually with smaller case necks.

There's no reason a nylon bore brush couldn't be used in place of a neck brush in my application as its a dry use. I happened to purchase a Midway dry neck lube kit deal years ago that I never really used for anything so I use the brushes from the old kit.

 

[Patocazador]

I 'lube' the inside of the necks with mica on a nylon brush. It comes off when tumbling on the next go around. Other than that I don't bother. Never seemed to matter for the last 30 years.