sooty rifle brass?

[Axis II]

i was just reading some posts trying to educate myself more on reloading and seen someone say they had sooty handgun brass and it was cause by low pressure.

my question is-does sooty rifle brass (223) mean low pressure or the brass isn't sealed/sized right?

when I set up my FL size die I set it up to where I would chamber brass and it wouldn't chamber so I would turn it in a bit and a bit more until it would chamber smoothly. I was just wondering if im sizing it wrong and leaving a gap for soot.

the soot is only on the neck to where it stops and starts into the shoulder but its not very sooty I have to wipe it with a rag or something.

 

[sugarmaker]

Some soot around the neck is normal, further down the case may mean not enough pressure to expand the case walls. To start out I suggest setting your sizer to touch the shellholder. if you adjust for a tight fit you may run into some reliability issues as your cases may grow a bit on subsequent loadings. A safer way is to smoke the shoulder of a fired case and run it into your sizer, adjusting until it just touches the shoulder, then add another 1/16 turn. This will give .003 to 005 setback. Then see if it chambers and go from there.

 

[Blue68f100]

What you describe is normal for rifle brass. When you fire the round the necks expand first creating the seal. With low pressure there is not enough for the seal, creating brass that is sooted all the way down. This mainly applies to bolt guns. With simi-autos your extracting the brass under pressure so the soot seams to travel the full length.

Your setting up your dies correctly. As the brass work hardens you may have to adj them again. This is where the competition shell holder help so you don't have to readjust your dies. Anealling the brass also eliminates the need to re adjust your dies. But you will fine that anealled brass does not have the spring back and may be forced to adj them to keep from over working the brass.

 

[Walkalong]

I was just wondering if im sizing it wrong and leaving a gap for soot.

Nope, sizing has nothing to do with it. The pressure blows the front part of the case walls up against the chamber, gripping and sealing the chamber That is its job, sealing off the rearward flow of hot, high pressure, gases. If it didn't, it would blow your eyeballs out of your head. This is why a case rupture is so bad.

The faster the case walls seal the chamber the less soot you will see on the cases. Full pressure rounds tend not to soot up cases much, and low pressure rounds tend to soot them up more. It's not a huge deal either way.

the soot is only on the neck to where it stops and starts into the shoulder but its not very sooty I have to wipe it with a rag or something.

Sounds fine.

 

[Axis II]

awesome. thanks guys.

when I read that and shot last night I said damn just when I thought I had it figured out I ran into another issue.