Turbulent Turtle
F-TR competitor
Story time.
When I get a new barrel for my F-TR rifle, I buy 500 cases of Lapua brass with the same lot number and then I use the cases in boxes of 100 in a round robin fashion. My regimen in the past called for me to trim the cases every 5 loading so that by the time I got to the end of the barrel life (about 4000 rounds), I would only need to trim once, or twice at most. Trimming cases ranks right down there with moving as possibly the least pleasant thing to do. It's not just the trimming, it's also the chamfering and deburring that necessarily follows. Yuck, phooey.
In the past I used a little hand trimmer to do the trimming part, followed by a quick encounter with my RCBS Trim Mate for the deburring and chamfering. Some years ago I adapted a power screwdriver to the trimmer and that made the chore just a little less unpleasant. Something like getting 22 lashes instead of 24.
Just before the trip to Raton last year, I loaded all 500 rounds for the events. 400 rounds were on their third loading and 100 on their fourth. I used these 400 rounds in Raton and I was extremely happy with my ammo; it certainly did not let me down. After I got home I started loading the ammo, while firing the last 100 rounds left over from Raton at local matches. That was the box on its fourth loading.
I was a little disappointed with my performance at the local club when I had done so well in Raton. I loaded my ammo for the TSRA mid-range championship in the fall and there I noticed that something was off. I was seeing things on the target that I just could not explain. A few weeks after that match, I noticed that opening the bolt required more effort than usual and I was getting that "click" at the upstroke. That indicated to me that my brass was too long, something that my micrometer showed to be very true. For some reason this batch of brass was growing a little faster than prior ones.
My current theory is that since I was now annealing after every loading, this allowed the brass to grow somewhat faster than without annealing or much more infrequent annealing.
So I was faced with having to trim all this brass ASAP. I decided to get a WFT trimmer and give that a whirl, so to speak. I have explained my travails with that device on another thread, but I was able to trim all the brass, right back to 2.005. The Trim Mate ran continually for hours on end and all brass was trimmed over a period of some weeks.
The results instantly manifested themselves on the target when I shot a 585-somethingX at the December match. At the just concluded TSRA Long Range Championship, my newly trimmed ammo did well enough for me to pull out a win.
I learned my lesson the hard way; if you change something in the loading process there are repercussions. In my case, (pun intended) the injection of the annealing step in my brass management caused the faster growth issue. I decided that I was going to have to trim/chamfer and deburr every third loading instead of every fifth.
This past weekend, I stopped by a friend's house and we talked about handloading for precision. The unspeakable b@stard had a Giraud trimmer on his bench just teasing me. This morning I ordered one to go with my Giraud annealer.
The Giraud trimmer should be here just in time as I intend to trim with the Giraud at every loading.
When I get a new barrel for my F-TR rifle, I buy 500 cases of Lapua brass with the same lot number and then I use the cases in boxes of 100 in a round robin fashion. My regimen in the past called for me to trim the cases every 5 loading so that by the time I got to the end of the barrel life (about 4000 rounds), I would only need to trim once, or twice at most. Trimming cases ranks right down there with moving as possibly the least pleasant thing to do. It's not just the trimming, it's also the chamfering and deburring that necessarily follows. Yuck, phooey.
In the past I used a little hand trimmer to do the trimming part, followed by a quick encounter with my RCBS Trim Mate for the deburring and chamfering. Some years ago I adapted a power screwdriver to the trimmer and that made the chore just a little less unpleasant. Something like getting 22 lashes instead of 24.
Just before the trip to Raton last year, I loaded all 500 rounds for the events. 400 rounds were on their third loading and 100 on their fourth. I used these 400 rounds in Raton and I was extremely happy with my ammo; it certainly did not let me down. After I got home I started loading the ammo, while firing the last 100 rounds left over from Raton at local matches. That was the box on its fourth loading.
I was a little disappointed with my performance at the local club when I had done so well in Raton. I loaded my ammo for the TSRA mid-range championship in the fall and there I noticed that something was off. I was seeing things on the target that I just could not explain. A few weeks after that match, I noticed that opening the bolt required more effort than usual and I was getting that "click" at the upstroke. That indicated to me that my brass was too long, something that my micrometer showed to be very true. For some reason this batch of brass was growing a little faster than prior ones.
My current theory is that since I was now annealing after every loading, this allowed the brass to grow somewhat faster than without annealing or much more infrequent annealing.
So I was faced with having to trim all this brass ASAP. I decided to get a WFT trimmer and give that a whirl, so to speak. I have explained my travails with that device on another thread, but I was able to trim all the brass, right back to 2.005. The Trim Mate ran continually for hours on end and all brass was trimmed over a period of some weeks.
The results instantly manifested themselves on the target when I shot a 585-somethingX at the December match. At the just concluded TSRA Long Range Championship, my newly trimmed ammo did well enough for me to pull out a win.
I learned my lesson the hard way; if you change something in the loading process there are repercussions. In my case, (pun intended) the injection of the annealing step in my brass management caused the faster growth issue. I decided that I was going to have to trim/chamfer and deburr every third loading instead of every fifth.
This past weekend, I stopped by a friend's house and we talked about handloading for precision. The unspeakable b@stard had a Giraud trimmer on his bench just teasing me. This morning I ordered one to go with my Giraud annealer.
The Giraud trimmer should be here just in time as I intend to trim with the Giraud at every loading.
