Odd occurance while reloading .308

[mugsie]

I've been a reloader for more years than I can count, and thought I had seen just about everything, but I guess not.

When I am done shooting, I throw all my brass, of the same caliber, into a bucket. When it gets to the point that I need to reload, I dump the bucket into a tumbler and clean it all off. From there I deprime / FL size, trim, chamfer etc into the tumbler again for a final cleaning to get the lube off. When finished I sort by head stamp and place into plastic bags labled with the head stamp and the letters RFL (ready for load) on the bag.

Today I picked up a bag of Winchester head stamp, primed and charged the cases, then started to seat the bullets. I felt as though there was zero resistance, absolutely minimal neck tension. I never had that happen before. The cases were FL sized because they were all deprimed and cleaned etc.

I figure I can shoot these as long as it's one at a time (I don't want to unload everything). The seating depth is fine. They'll only have a lot less neck tension than I'm used to.

So - anyone ever had this happen to them, whereby they FL sized yet the neck tension was "loose"? Almost as though they were never sized? Also, I don't see anything dangerous because if anything the pressure will be less. Does this rational make sense?

I'd appreciate your input as to what may have happened and what you think about shooting them - loaded one at a time (I don't want the recoil moving the bullets remaining in the magazine out past where I seat them to).

Thanks all....

 

[judgedelta]

You might give one the push test against the side of the bench to see just how much neck tension you have.....

 

[mugsie]

There's very little neck tension, basically just enough to hold the bullet in place!

Thoughts?

 

[Level10]

Perhaps a light crimp using a Lee FCD would help a bit...and this is most def not a "fix"

 

[Blue68f100]

I would have stopped on the first one. You may have miss marked the bag and they were not sized. It would be pretty easy to test by running one through the sizer again.

 

[blarby]

^^^^that^^^^

Or your sizer is now way oversized, somehow.

If not, and you have that little neck tension, those cases are done. It happens to the best of them.

 

[Level10]

If you have to "question" if you should or shouldn't shoot them, you shouldn't. Might suck because of all the effort you put into the rounds already, BUT it "could" suck worse if you shoot them. Bullet pulling, salvaging the powder, resizing without the decap pin(should be easy to apply a light amount of lube to JUST the outside with no harm to primer)...mic the I.D. before and after if in spec try charging and seating one again. Just a thought....

As far as what "happened"...if all are the same I doubt it would be the brass rather something got mixed up or something. Once again we can only "assume".

Be safe whatever you decide!

 

[Walkalong]

No amount of crimp will fix a lack of neck tension.


As brass work hardens, it springs back more and more, affecting neck tension. It doesn't seem to show as bad with a FL expander ball sizer, but with a bushing die it will show up pretty quickly.

With my new Lapua .308 brass I had to change to a smaller neck bushing on the fourth sizing. I could have annealed after three firings as well, but just used a smaller bushing to get me back to the neck tension I wanted. (Light neck tension.) If the cases had not been sized, the bullets would fall through.

Weird that it changed that much. Do you know how many times the cases had been fired?

 

[mugsie]

Cases were sized about three times. I'm not worried about shooting them as light neck tension will not spike pressures. They will all fire fine. I'll try one or two and decide if I want to resize without a decamping pin. What I don't understand is how they were deprived yet the neck wasn't sized. Really strange.

 

[FROGO207]

The necks are work hardened and they will spring back to the OPEN size not to what the sizer is making them and stay there. Annealing will allow you to use them again as it will soften the brass once again. FWIW loose neck tension will probably give you terrible accuracy with those rounds when you shoot them.

 

[gamestalker]

When you refer to lacking neck tension, are you saying that you can move the bullets in the necks by hand, or when you push them against the bench, they sink deeper into the case mouth, loose?

Or are you just sensing less resistance when you seat them?

If you can get them to move without too much effort as described above, then you definitely have a neck tension problem, for some reason or another.

Personally, I would pull them and diagnose the problem. If they are displaying significant swings in neck tension, it will likely effect accuracy.

GS

 

[mugsie]

Let me tell you how it ends. Too often, there never seems to be a conclusion, so in this case I thought I'd post one.

After all the reading I did on neck tension, it apparently doesn't matter that it's too loose. Accuracy would be affected, but as far as over pressure - that wouldn't happen. Anyway, I'v always been on the play it safe side, so I set up a turret press, collet puller in one location, neck sizer in the other. Pulled the bullets, dumped the powder into the scale pan, neck sized (I had removed the decapping pin), replaced the powder from the pan to the case, and on another press, reseated the bullets. Each one this time had a pressure that I could feel, unlike last time. Still don't know what happened, but once they're fired they will be annealed like all the rest waiting on cleaning etc.

So there you have it - next week I'll see how they shoot.

For those of you who offered suggestions - thank you.