Dr. Doug,
You didn't ruin your sizing dies when they started to scratch. They can be restored to better than new by simply polishing them out. Here is the quote from Varmint Al's website. I've restored numerous dies with this method for myself and friends. It only takes a couple of minutes per die and they work better after polishing than they did when first purchased.
"POLISH THE DIES.... I polish the inside of my rifle reloading dies. Most die manufacturers leave the die bores smooth but not polished. A polished die will resize with much less axial force than one in the as-received condition. I disassemble them and put a little Flitz on a cotton bore mop held in a drill motor and polish each one for 30 seconds or more at a 300 to 600 rpm speed. Sometimes I have to wrap a paper towel around the swab to get a good fit. Then I clean all the polish out with hot water and dry with a paper towel wrapped around a clean cotton swab. The polishing process does not remove a measurable amount of material, but results in smoother operation, minimizes the scratching or scoring of the brass, and minimizes crumpling problems when I use them while forming wildcat brass.
Flitz is slightly more aggressive than JB. I took a piece of mild steel with a reasonably smooth finish and polished it with Flitz and JB. The left end was polished for about 2 minutes at 500 rpm with Flitz and the right end for about 2 minutes with JB. There is no detectable decrease in the diameter on either end measured with my high-precision Mitutoyo Micrometer. It was a very easy test. Try it for yourself."
Another thing that causes scratching of brass is polish residue left on the brass from the original tumbling process. This is especially noticable with pistol brass sized in a carbide die. My process is to polish in treated corncob and then tumble for about 30 minutes in untreated corncob to remove the residue.
If you're experiencing really fine scratching on straight walled pistol cases, it's not the die, it's the left over residue. Clean the die real good and then tumble the brass for a few minutes in untreated corn cob and I'll bet the scratching will go away.
Bushmaster,
Why isn't there a bounty on the ecofreaks? They claim I'm "ruining the sand dunes" when I ride my ATV on them, but when the wind blows in the afternoon, there isn't a trace of my ever having been there! They've closed over half of the dunes for the Western Snowy Plover, which they admit isn't really endangered, just that this is an area where they "sometimes nest". The prime plover nesting areas are in BC and Alaska. It's sickening what they get away with. Hell, I'm 61 years old and if the world was going to end because of what I've done, I think it would have ended by now. They freak out when someone spills a drop of oil or diesel in the water, but what happened after World War I and II, with the thousands of ships sunk and millions of gallons of oil in the water? There were no long term bad effects from any of that, since the earth takes care of itself, without man's short term efforts, which usually just screw things up anyway. See, you pushed my button and now I have to go take a nap...........
Fred
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