357 Mag case hang up.... NEED HELP

[M-61]

Friend has a Dillon press. Competent reloader. Mixed brass. His Winchester brass (7 out of 10) when cycling through the powder charging die (which he tells me also bells the mouth) the brass gets stuck to the point he needs both hands to withdraw it. All the other makes of brass go through flawlessly.
I do not load pistol brass (as an earlier post indicated) nor am I familiar with Dillon Presses.
Anyone have an idea? Thanks.

 

[243winxb]

Mixed brass needs to be trimmed, so that they are all the same length. Long ones make more contact with the powder funnel.

From Starline FAQ

There are two situations that create this problem. The first is one we have just recently identified. It seems to be associated with the dillon powder funnel and only a couple of calibers (45 Auto and 40 S&W). The land for expanding case mouth is too long and when you begin to bell mouth the bottom of expander gets into the thicker taper of case and wedges causing it to be very hard to get back out. We have modified several by increasing radius on end and slightly shortening expanding land and this eliminated the problem completely. One other cause can be a burr at case mouth created by the final trim operation, which grabs onto expander as it comes back up. This situation does not often appear and can be fixed by deburring case mouth or inside lubing cases.

 

[riflewoman]

Swap out the Dillon expander for one of these. These are designed more like the Lyman M die.

http://www.uniquetek.com/product/T1582

 

[divingin]

Happens on my Hornady progressive sometimes as well.

I suspect it's the brass binding and galling on the expander plug (powder-through plug, in these cases.) Your friend should pull the expander and make sure that brass is not building up on the surface of the plug - if it is, the problem will continue to get worse as more brass deposits.

As to a solution, lubing every few cases will help, but may not be possible if using a case feeder (I don't.) Not wet-tumbling may leave enough carbon inside to prevent the galling problem.