Do you lube with Carbide dies?

[21 shooter]

Due to tendonitis I recently tried the One Shot lube. It works great, made loading much easier, and I use carbide dies. HSMITH, I will give the plastic bag method a try. It sounds like a good idea.

BTW, I have surfed this site a few times, and it looks like a good web site with good information. This is my first post.

 

[Paul "Fitz" Jones]

Carbide dies

In pistol cases in a progressive I occasionally will use a Q Tip with automotive STP into the carbide sizer as it reduces the resistance when loading over a thousand rounds.

In Carbine I use it also and I have never bought a 223 carbide die as lube is always necessary so I have always used steel rifle dies.

Paul Jones

 

[HSMITH]

Welcome to The High Road 21 shooter!!!

 

[Stealthfixr]

Almost by accident I noticed that all of the reloading on my Dillon SDB was much smoother with lube on the cases (accidental WD40 overspray). I then bought Hornady One Shot, and it has made the whole reloading process smoother, faster and more consistent. I use it for all of my reloading now. It's cheap to do and helps quite a bit--makes pulling the handle practically effortless.

 

[Bronson7]

I would imagine it has the added benefit of more consistant powder drops for those folks with less than rock solid benches.
Bronson7

 

[BluesBear]

That is the whole point to carbide dies.

Not exactly. The whole point to carbide dies is that you don't have to lube them.

When I was loading commercially I used to do about 5000 rounds per week on a single stage press. (1980s-before Mike Dillon made it easy)
I used a lot of trade-in brass. Some .38 and .357 brass had more of a bulge at the bass than others depending upon the gun it was fired in.

I didn't have to lube them but it sure made loading them a lot easier.
I used large plastic dog dishes that used to come free in 50lb bags of Purina Dog Chow. I dump in a bunch of fired cased, hit it with a quick shot of silicon spray and go from there. The biggest difference was noted with nickeled cases.


I didn't vote in the poll because there was no option for "sometimes".
A poll should always have at least a 3rd or Other option.

 

[tc300mag1]

I do sometimes as of late i have not as much force required to resize and when your doing 1k at a time

 

[Jeeper]

If you are using a progressive with anything other than one shot you are really missing out. You dont have to clean it off the brass afterwards. The other lubes out there like dillons and such are better lubes but are so damn messy. I use a plastic shoe box with a few hundred rounds of brass in it and hose it down with one shot. Then it goes into my case feeder. I do this for every caliber. It just make it that much easier to load. Whether you need to do it with carbide is up in the air. It makes it so much smoother that I would never go back to doing it without it.

 

[buford1]

Why.

 

[MrPhil]

Tried 1 Shot in the bag . . .

. . . and it worked really well! Thanks to HSmith for passing this tip along.

 

[MrPhil]

I decided to resurrect this thread!

If you haven't tried lubing your straight walled pistol cases, even with carbide dies, you may be missing a neat trick. It really makes sizing easier. HSMITH suggested using Hornady One Shot in a bag. It really works. I've started using an old bread bag. I turn the bag inside out, spray it with One Shot, quickly reversing the bag. Add some cases, mush them all around. The result is several hundred lightly lubed cases (lubed on the outside only) and much easier reloading.
Try it before you bash it!

 

[Black Snowman]

Since I'm cheap and lasy I've been using canola oil instead of one shot on my rifle brass. I put a spoonful in a zip lock bag, add brass, shake, resize. Worked well even with the 340 Weatherby.

I coat more consistantly than I could with the paste type lubes making my chances of getting a truely tough one a bit lower. Not as good a lube as One Shot but much cheaper.

 

[stans]

I usually don't lube straight wall cases with carbide dies. I will thoroughly clean the carbide die and lightly lubricate the carbide ring, but I don't lube the cases.

 

[Mannlicher]

If I wanted to lube cases, I would not use Carbide dies. I have used the same .357 RCBS set for many years, and they load as true today, as when they were new. No lube has ever sullied these dies.

 

[Gunrunner]

I've always lightly lubed cases used in carbide dies with RCBS Case Slick. It's seemed to make the resizing go much easier for me. I roll the sized cases on paper towels after, and then tumble them in corn media to get the residual lube off.

 

[JuniorG]

When I start the loading process for our 9mm ammo I set my progressive up with the sizer/decap die and the bell die. I'll run any where from 1000 to 3000 cases thru it.

Then all the brass gets tumbled, sorted by headstamp, then each case is inspected, primer pocket cleaned and case brushed out.

Then I set up the press with the seater and lockout die, hook up the primer and powder assmby and start the actual loading.

I don't actually count the cases when sizing but, when the little bin that catches the brass has been dumped twice I take the die out, remove the decap assmby and run a patch thru the die with some stuff called 'One Lube' from The Slick 50 people. Only takes a minute, cleans the build-up out of the die and makes sizing easier.

So do I lube the cases when using a carbide die?

Nope.

I lube the die

 

[rick_reno]

I never lube pistol brass.

 

[Johnny Guest]

I like to think I'm never too old to learn a new trick or two - - -

I was so happy to get my first carbide dies, 'WAY back in the 1960s - - Because I could do away with the messy and sticky old rubber pad and lube from a bottle. Still had to use it for rifle cases and such.

Then I learned how much easier things became, by tumbling and otherwise cleaning up dirty cases.

Later on, the spray-on case lube made things easier still, for non-carbide dies. Hey, anything to reduce the labor, right?

I just happened onto this old, resurrected thread, and noticed the plastic-bag-and-One-Shot thing, in conjunction with carbide dies. Last week, I was preparing for a SMG match and noticed I was short on hardball .45 ammo. Plenty of components on hand, so I ran off a couple of hundred rounds on my D550B.

During a break, I recalled the One Shot in a bag trick and gave it a try. I store my cleaned cases in gallon size zip top freezer bags anyway. It took less than a minute to do the spray thing. AMAZING! Hard to believe how much smoother the process became.

My sincere thanks to those who made the suggestion. So simple, so easy. A new trick for an old dawg!


Johnny

 

[Jeeper]

Johhny Guest has the right attitude here. It is funny to me that others arent even willing to try a new idea out of what can only be called stubornness. I have yet to recommend one shot to anyone who hasnt thought it was great.

 

[HSMITH]

Way to go Johnny!!! You have SEEN the light brother and all is GOOD !!!!!!

It is nearly impossible to go back to the way it was, do you have plenty of One Shot on hand? Hopefully not, Midway and the like don't charge much more shipping for a couple other 'gottahavits' .

 

[MoNsTeR]

I think you need to check the sear/hammer engagement on your post button

 

[HSMITH]

Wow, what a mess, moderators please feel free to clean up the mess I have made..........

MOD RESPONSE:
Hey, stuff happens. It was a system problem, now (hopefully) corrected. I think I took out about five copies of your post. This may be a record. I've seen a lot of three- and four duplicates.
Johnny