Flouncer
What the heck it works for me !!
Meant for humorous chuckle, not argumentative but the Lyman manual is almost certainly tempered by the fact they have a legal department and they have that because . . . . .
NEVER TRIM more than 4x.....
- Thread starter jlow
- Start date
Meant for humorous chuckle, not argumentative but the Lyman manual is almost certainly tempered by the fact they have a legal department and they have that because . . . . .
Ed that is an interesting table you posted in post #16 re longevity by make. What is its source?
I think I copied it from a old issue of Reloader Magazine and the cases were fired in a new Savage .308 rifle. The only problem is no mention of minimum shoulder bump was stated. And I think the die was set up per the instructions making hard contact with the shell holder. So again the amount of trimming or case lengthening is governed by chamber diameter and die diameter.
Example I have a standard Lee .223 die that will reduce the case body diameter more than my RCBS .223 small base die. Meaning the Lee die requires the case to be trimmed more often than any other .223 die I have.
Bottom line, if I followed the Lyman manual advice my cases would not die from split necks and old age. Last week I tossed 20 30-30 cases in my scrap brass bucket I bought in 1982 because some of the necks started to split. So mark me down not in favor of early forced retirement by someone else's standards.
Last edited:
Below on the right is as close as I have ever come to a total case head separation in over 47 years of reloading.
The Winchester .303 British case was full length resized and fired three times with .009 head clearance. And yet a case neck sized only and fired with light loads was fired 32 times before the neck split.
It is the amount of head clearance and the case stretching beyond its elastic limits that determines case life, and not how many times the case is trimmed.
I wet tumble and trim my cases after each wet tumbling to clean up the case mouth. And would never think of throwing the cases away after four firings.
And if you want accurate case stretching and thinning readings rather than guessing with how many times you trim the case then get a RCBS case mastering gauge.
The above message was brought to you by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Rifle Cartridge Cases.
The Winchester .303 British case was full length resized and fired three times with .009 head clearance. And yet a case neck sized only and fired with light loads was fired 32 times before the neck split.
It is the amount of head clearance and the case stretching beyond its elastic limits that determines case life, and not how many times the case is trimmed.
I wet tumble and trim my cases after each wet tumbling to clean up the case mouth. And would never think of throwing the cases away after four firings.
And if you want accurate case stretching and thinning readings rather than guessing with how many times you trim the case then get a RCBS case mastering gauge.
The above message was brought to you by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Rifle Cartridge Cases.
Last edited:
Dusty Stevens
Shiner
Below on the right is as close as I have ever come to a total case head separation in over 47 years of reloading.
The Winchester .303 British case was full length resized and fired three times with .009 head clearance. And yet a case neck sized only and fired with light loads was fired 32 times before the neck split.
It is the amount of head clearance and the case stretching beyond its elastic limits that determines case life, and not how many times the case is trimmed.
I wet tumble and trim my cases after each wet tumbling to clean up the case mouth. And would never think of throwing the cases away after four firings.
And if you want accurate case stretching and thinning readings rather than guessing with how many times you trim the case then get a RCBS case mastering gauge.
The above message was brought to you by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Rifle Cartridge Cases.
Theyre saying if you NEED to trim them 4 times they have stretched too much and should be discarded
I don't want to ever have case head separation in any of my guns. Depending on the cartridge I pitch cases after the 4th loading, been doing this for 40 years with rifles. I'll add that I'm a person that loads pretty much to the max load.
And I'm saying four trims is horse poop, case stretching in the base is governed by head clearance and the quality of the brass. And there is no way to set a arbitrary 4 trims as max case life.
The Nosler case below first stretched .003 on its 8th firing and the Norma case didn't stretch until its 18th firing.
The Federal case below will have a stretched out primer pocket before 4 trimmings. And the Lake City case with the hardest brass in it base will go 5 years or 50,000 miles (or more than 4 trimmings)
If you have a fat chamber and skinny die you will need to trim more often. "BUT" its the head clearance and quality of the brass that governs case stretching and thinning as the chart above shows. And the above chart has the same rifle and sizing die and the only thing different is the brand of case.
Dusty Stevens
Shiner
All theyre saying, and it doesnt matter how much head clearance, how much your die bumps, how big your chamber is, or how hard your brass is- if your brass reaches the trim length that saami recommends 4 times then you got what .040+ of brass coming from somewhere so throw it away. You can explain away all you want but that brass came from somewhere, and with their audience they need to toss it. All im doing is telling you why they said what they did. Lets just say the guy with the remington 742 30-06 and the lee pacesetter dies loads 3 times then reaches trim length. He trims. Do that 4 times- toss the brass. That guy has no idea why nor does he care- they had to set a baseline/ standard.
And the radio broadcaster Paul Harvey once said on the radio "That orange juice causes cancer in gay rats" and I didn't believe that either.
At 38,000 cup or 43,000 psi my 30-30 cases have the primer protruding because the chamber pressure is not great enough to push the case against the bolt face. "BUT" these 30-30 cases still grow in length when full length resized and need trimmed.
I'm going to start a new reloading myth, if you use a RCBS full length X-die you should throw your cases away after five reloads.
Better yet don't lube the inside of your case necks and drag the long Redding expander through the case neck. And then throw the cases away after trimming 4 times.
Or if you want to save your cases after trimming 4 times, then file the headstamp off and relabel the cases Winchester because Winchester cases are thinner.
My cases die of oversized primer pockets or cracked necks and not how much Lyman tells you the case is allowed to stretch.
jlow
The photo below is from the Lyman 50th Edition and explains more in depth.
Tell your friend this .060 of trimming only applies to people who can't afford a bent paper clip and have no other way to check for case stretching and thinning in the base web area of the case.
And since I'm smart, very good looking and extremely modest
(I thought I would "stretch" the truth a little) I use the $100.00 bent paper clip substitute below.I don't care how much the case grows after full length resizing and needs trimming. I check for case stretching and thinning using a gauge in thousandths of an inch.
Causes of Case-Head Separation
http://www.accurateshooter.com/technical-articles/case-head-separation-cause-diagnosis/
Last edited:
jimmymac
Jim McGregor
I have no problem with the instructions Lyman provides. That book has been the launching pad for countless reloaders. I was one of them over 40 years ago, and here I am today with no case head separations to date and still retaining all the same body parts I started with.
Lyman is providing basic instructions for new reloaders, so I give them credit for covering the topic. Since they did cover the topic, they had to come up with a simple rule for new reloaders to use as a go by to keep that person safe when shooting. Not a bad thing considering I might end up sitting at a bench right next that new guy. I like the idea that his gun won't blow up because Lyman told him to chuck his cases even though they probably have some life left. Cases are cheaper to buy than a new eyeball, so I'm all for the new guy dumping his cases sooner rather than later.
Lyman is providing basic instructions for new reloaders, so I give them credit for covering the topic. Since they did cover the topic, they had to come up with a simple rule for new reloaders to use as a go by to keep that person safe when shooting. Not a bad thing considering I might end up sitting at a bench right next that new guy. I like the idea that his gun won't blow up because Lyman told him to chuck his cases even though they probably have some life left. Cases are cheaper to buy than a new eyeball, so I'm all for the new guy dumping his cases sooner rather than later.
I personally have no problem with manuals urging caution. Reloading can be a dangerous sport and so a good dose of caution is good. My personal feeling is the CAUTION in the original post is too vague and does not explain the reason for the caution which Uncle Ed’s version does give. If it was aimed at the layman reloader, there is a good chance that it can cause undue panic and result in the disposal of perfectly good and sometimes very expensive brass.
As an instructor, I am of the school that urging caution is good, but it should be accompanied by an easy to understand rationale. Treating new shooters like they are stupid and cannot understand is incorrect. Doing things by cook book with no understanding is a recipe for problem/disaster. Which my guess is the reason why they Lyman had to modify their original CAUTION.
I of course have used the paperclip method for years and it is an excellent method. Having said so, I have seen a number of actual case head separation (NOT case rupture which is completely different and very dangerous) in both modern rifles and pistols and it is generally not a dangerous occurrence. The rear of the case seals the chamber and no hot gas/plasma comes back to the bolt. It just leaves the forward part of your case in the chamber causing a jam when another round is loaded. Still something which one should try to avoid.
As an instructor, I am of the school that urging caution is good, but it should be accompanied by an easy to understand rationale. Treating new shooters like they are stupid and cannot understand is incorrect. Doing things by cook book with no understanding is a recipe for problem/disaster. Which my guess is the reason why they Lyman had to modify their original CAUTION.
I of course have used the paperclip method for years and it is an excellent method. Having said so, I have seen a number of actual case head separation (NOT case rupture which is completely different and very dangerous) in both modern rifles and pistols and it is generally not a dangerous occurrence. The rear of the case seals the chamber and no hot gas/plasma comes back to the bolt. It just leaves the forward part of your case in the chamber causing a jam when another round is loaded. Still something which one should try to avoid.
Last edited:
Brians356
Silver $$ Contributor
Where do you find SAAMI "Trim Length"? All I find are case "Min", "Trim-to" and "Max" lengths.
By "trim length" you mean "Max Length"?
-
Below on the right is as close as I have ever come to a total case head separation in over 47 years of reloading.
The Winchester .303 British case was full length resized and fired three times with .009 head clearance. And yet a case neck sized only and fired with light loads was fired 32 times before the neck split.
It is the amount of head clearance and the case stretching beyond its elastic limits that determines case life, and not how many times the case is trimmed.
The 303, and I assume too other military rimmed designs, are special cases (no pun intended). As they headspace on the rim alone, you can allow large clearances at the upper body / shoulder level. In issue ammunition intended to be fired only once and chucked, any clearance smaller than that which would cause an instant case separation or rupture can be tolerated - and often is. This was a deliberate policy in the case of the British military 303s many of which have very slack and over-length chambers as it allowed acceptable functioning in the field with poor quality wartime manufacture ammo, corroded, dented, slightly bent, dirty etc cases, badly fouled chambers and so on.
There is a second factor that affects the Lee Enfield series of rifles that often causes even neck-sized brass to separate in only a few firings and which is load / pressure related. The weak action (especially the earlier Long Metfords / Lees and SMLE) and perhaps even more so the thin bolt whose rear-located lugs are of very different sizes / construction, the right-hand one being a very long job to double up as a bolt guide in the slotted receiver bridge when in the open position, allow the case to flex on one side under firing pressures. Sizing for minimal shoulder clearance and using mild loads is all that the 303 handloader can do for these rifles, apart from obtaining brass whose alloy and construction is such that it accepts a degree of stretching.
I never had a problem with 303 calibre Enfields, and some Norma brass that cost me a small fortune at the time as a beginning indigent fullbore shooter despite being in a close-out sale saw me through several rifles and an unknown, but large number of firings. The problem came when I took up GB 'Target Rifle' in the 80s and like many cash-strapped TR tyros of that era bought an ex club former 'Service Rifle' discipline No.4 Enfield that had been rebuilt in 7.62 by G E Fulton & Sons of Bisley for the switch from SR to TR in the late 60s.
I got my first incipient separation of Winchester 308 brass on its fourth firing and was shocked as it had been neck-sized throughout and I was using a very mild load. Enquiring about this and worrying about a faulty chamber or whatever, I was told this was normal for 7.62 Enfields. Within a box of 50 cases, the first victim would appear at the 4th or 5th firing, then it would be one or two for the next few firngs, but around the 8th or 9th it became much more frequent so I'd junk the survivors. Both the nature of the stretching / cracking and the large variation in life from a single loading intrigued me - it was never a straight ring around the case body, always higher on one side. I eventually came to the conclusion that the Lee bolt construction and locking arrangements allowed the bolt to twist in one direction under firing pressure and that in a box of 50 cases being loaded multiple times, random positioning in the chamber would see extremes of one or two cases positioned with the same side at any given point of the chamber / bolt-face on every or nearly every firing causing whichever section of case wall that stretched more to be rapidly weakened whilst at the other extreme one or two cases got a different position each time spreading the stretching out over more case wall and giving better life. Most were in between the extremes.
Why the problem in 308 and not 303? Simply, a very mild 308 load generates say 50,000 psi or a bit more whilst an equivalent modest 303 loading is 10,000 psi less, so the former gets a lot more punishment.
That reminded me of a veteran and very harum-scarum character I used to shoot alongside on the local military ranges at the time I had my 7.62 No.4. To justify the description, the late Reg Collinson who'd started shooting as a teenage schoolboy Home Guard private during WW2 - a real life Private Pike of the Dad's Army sitcom - was (and is) the only person I know who managed to have an accidental discharge of a firearm inside his own house. In fact he did it not once, but twice (on two separate dates) with a 38 Spcl target revolver. I can only conclude he was experimenting with Russian Roulette but missed!
When I first met Reg he shot a 303 Number 4 which apart from Parker-Hale match sights and a few Reg-performed (and usually dangerous) DIY 'improvements' such as a 'trigger job' that regularly produced random discharges until a proper gunsmith fixed it, was as God and His Majesty had issued it to some Tommy in the closing stages of WW2. Reg loaded and fired his brass until it separated ("Boxer cases are EXPENSIVE" he'd say) and then, and only then was it junked invariably in two pieces. So in a day on the range shooting maybe 50 or 60 rounds over 300-600 yards, Reg would have at least a half dozen separations, never any leaking gas or anything bad as you say except the shot would be a flier (or even more of a flier than many of his 'good shots')
This range saw a lot of interruptions to shooting as military parties marched to and from adjacent ranges across our usually allocated range which lay closest to the car park and during one unusually long one on a fine warm summer's day as we lazed around, Reg becoming increasingly irritated and restive at the absence of trigger-pulling, I produced a separated 303 case extractor from my bag for diversion and said 'You'll recognize this Reg' to the great man. 'You foolish boy carrying that thing around' he responded. 'These were only ever needed by Bren and Vickers gunners - you can always get the front half of the case out of a rifle chamber easily' quoth he. (..... and he should know)
As luck would have it, the red flag was hauled down and we restarted just at that moment and Reg (as usual) was the first to fire. There was an unusually long pause and fumbling with the rifle after the target was marked and Reg turned to me and said with some embarrassment 'Er, can I borrow your extractor Laurie. I've got a stuck separated case.' So, the moral of the story is there is (occasionally) some justice in the universe, or alternatively don't be too dogmatic in your assertions!
Last edited:
Dusty Stevens
Shiner
Yes trim length is the length in which you need to trim so max length
NorCalMikie
Gold $$ Contributor
If you shoot an M1 OR M1A, you better have a "broken case extractor" in you goodie/range bag. Sooner or later, you WILL need it.
In fact, it's best to have one for "each" caliber you shoot. Got them and used each one at least once.
In fact, it's best to have one for "each" caliber you shoot. Got them and used each one at least once.
Laurie – some interesting stories – thanks!
That unusual stretching/cracking in the 7.62 Enfield is very interesting, and good of you to figure out how that happened.
I've wonder in the past why we have the stretching (I.e. the ring) where we always see it. My own thinking is this: So say for a case with too much headspace, when the round is first fired, the firing pin push the case forward all the way to the chamber shoulder, the case fires and expands and start gripping the wall of the chamber. The head being the thickest I think expands less or slower and so grips with less force. Since there is good grip at the front but less at the back (at least for a few millisecond), the back is allowed to move back to the bolt face thus stretching it right at the junction.
This of course is the easy part. Th question though is with the proposed thinning and potential case head separation due to trimming, where would the thinning be? Logically it would unlikely be in the same place as the above since brass moving to the neck due to pressure (or not????) presumably would come from all parts of the case?
Reg sounds like quite the character and we all seem to have at least one at the range – hopefully not a dangerous one. I’ve never had a case head separation, but my understanding is a bore brush works well.
That unusual stretching/cracking in the 7.62 Enfield is very interesting, and good of you to figure out how that happened.
I've wonder in the past why we have the stretching (I.e. the ring) where we always see it. My own thinking is this: So say for a case with too much headspace, when the round is first fired, the firing pin push the case forward all the way to the chamber shoulder, the case fires and expands and start gripping the wall of the chamber. The head being the thickest I think expands less or slower and so grips with less force. Since there is good grip at the front but less at the back (at least for a few millisecond), the back is allowed to move back to the bolt face thus stretching it right at the junction.
This of course is the easy part. Th question though is with the proposed thinning and potential case head separation due to trimming, where would the thinning be? Logically it would unlikely be in the same place as the above since brass moving to the neck due to pressure (or not????) presumably would come from all parts of the case?
Reg sounds like quite the character and we all seem to have at least one at the range – hopefully not a dangerous one. I’ve never had a case head separation, but my understanding is a bore brush works well.
That's how I've always understood it. The exception can be rimmed or belted cases where the back end is fixed in place by the rim / belt and if shoulders are pushed back on resizing will see the separation take place about two thirds of the way up the body. The weakest point on the case then moves there with the thinner brass near the top of the body being stretched as the front end is fireformed to the chamber.
My old long departed friend Reg really was a character of the type you rarely see these days. The stories about his exploits were legion, especially about his pistol handloads (which I never saw as I didn't shoot pistol with him). My favourite was one in which he had one of the very large Webley Mk VI WW1 0.455" Cal service revolvers, like all of this series a break-open hinged frame type with the action held shut by a top catch located on a rather weak pin. Standing in the line one day, Reg's Webley blew open thanks to an overload, probably a double charge, causing the catch and its pin to fail, the fired case no doubt exiting the cylinder explosively in fragments. The line of shooters bar Reg threw themselves down or dropped into a crouch with their hands over their heads. Reg stood stock still, looked at the revolver puzzled and said: "That's funny! It never did that before." However, nothing really bad ever happened to this guy. Maybe the old saying that God looks after fools and drunks (not that Reg was ever drunk) is true.
My 30-30 does not stretch the case and has the primers protruding due to its lower chamber pressure of 43,000 psi. But the .303 British at 49,000 psi will push the base of the case to meet the bolt face and stretch cases depending on the amount of head clearance.
The British Enfield rifle allows you to change bolt heads to adjust the headspace.
The British Enfield rifle allows you to change bolt heads to adjust the headspace.
Last edited:
Laurie – thanks for the info – much appreciated. Reg does seem to be quite the character and I am glad to hear that he never got hurt. We all need someone like that to keep our life interesting and smiling…
Uncle Ed – the info on the 30-30 and .303 is very interesting, but I am wondering how the M1A setup leads to such dramatic neck lengthening/case thinning. Not doubting that it happens, just wondering how it happens. Mostly to satisfy a curious mind!
Uncle Ed – the info on the 30-30 and .303 is very interesting, but I am wondering how the M1A setup leads to such dramatic neck lengthening/case thinning. Not doubting that it happens, just wondering how it happens. Mostly to satisfy a curious mind!
Upgrades & Donations
This Forum's expenses are primarily paid by member contributions. You can upgrade your Forum membership in seconds. Gold and Silver members get unlimited FREE classifieds for one year. Gold members can upload custom avatars.
Click Upgrade Membership Button ABOVE to get Gold or Silver Status.
You can also donate any amount, large or small, with the button below. Include your Forum Name in the PayPal Notes field.
To DONATE by CHECK, or make a recurring donation, CLICK HERE to learn how.
Click Upgrade Membership Button ABOVE to get Gold or Silver Status.
You can also donate any amount, large or small, with the button below. Include your Forum Name in the PayPal Notes field.
To DONATE by CHECK, or make a recurring donation, CLICK HERE to learn how.