Thanx for that info. Now I gotta go learn what all it means.
Brass is the big black hole for me. I ordered 50 Peterson, as to my reading they were they least learning / preparation curve.
Current question re: above:
- What's the right flash hole de-burrer?
- How do you uniform primer pockets? Thru firing with light loads?
- Is turning necks so the rounds will be able to be chambered, given the reamer used, or more an accurizing step?
- I gotta learn more about NS bushings, and sizing dies.
- Lube inside the neck, or just brush away some of the carbon?
- I gotta learn more about neck tension
- I am resisting annealing with all my might. lol I had a thread on here about that, but....
That's why I call this a "journey."
I saw a coupla titanium / black / stainless color palattes and decided that's what I wanted. I'm a big fan of MPA chassis.
Garandman -
Howdy, again !
While not all shooters / types of rifle shooting require detailed brass prep, it should not hurt accuracy when procedures are correctly performed.... irregardless of the type of rifle shooting being accomplished. Not all circumstances warrant detailed brass prep. One must decide for themself.
Fire form:
For many reloaders, especially reloading for precision / accuracy shooting; the cardinal rule is to make all the brass the same. If not manufactured that way, then do what one can to make them closest to identical.
This is particularly true as concerns case capacity. The latter concern compells many shooters to fire form brass first; in-advance of attempting to shoot their best groups. The theory is that the fired cases fully expand out to fit the chamber, so capacity of the case has been fully establshed.
De-bur:
On many brands of brass, the flash hole is " broached " and not drilled, This can result in burs inside the case, which are thought to potentially have negative effects on the propagation of the ignition forces outward into the powder columne.
A flash hole de-bur tool is often a tool w/ a screwdrive-like handle and a shaft long enough to reach the flash hole down inside the case. Their is a cutter at the end of the shaft, which removes the burs and leaves a slight chamfer around the flash hole.
Primer pocket uniform:
This if often a round bar shaped tool, that has a small rifle primer sized pocket uniforming " cutter " at one end, and a cutter for large rifle primer pockets @ the other. There are various brands of brass that are made with the occasional primer pocket that is not as deep or " uniform " in depth as the others. To uniform, the cutter is inserted and spun to remove a small amount of excess brass, so that all primer pockets can be of the same depth. This aids primer seating uniformity.
Neck turning and neck sizing:
There's all sorts of discussions and debate that comes with many reloading practices people might use.
The need / use / necessity for neck turning and /or neck sizing is certainly an area that receives much discussion. The debate runs towards whether one is providing more-uniform bullet tension, or .....
whether one is providing more consistent neck clearnce for the cartridge? If you were to check for neck wall thickness variance between your cases, and found cases(s) that varied notably from the others... then you pmight want to do outside neck turning. This might be something as simple as removing " orange peel " texture on the thick spots of the necks. You can use a marker to darken the neck exterior, and then see where the low spots are after neck turning by observing any random remaining dark " pockets ". It's fer sher you wouldn't want to make neck walls too thin, therefore neck turning is quite often kept to a minimum in scope.
When materiel is removed from case neck' walls via outside neck turning, then iits possible an adjustment in the sized outside diameter of the necks might be warranted. Bushing neck size dies allow one to try varying amounts of " squeeze " that is being imparted to the necks. Some look at this as a sort of " pre-load " imparted to the brass, for lack of a better term. The necks must be sized to securely hold the seated bullets, and some sized case OD's will show better accuracy results @ the range than others.
Neck cleaning:
Dry brush to remove remants of powder combustion by-products. Dry film lube ( motor Mica, graphite or similar ).
Annealing:
Shouldn't be needed for new brass, or for brass only fired a couple of times (IMHO ) .
In fact, ALL of the above are submitted IMHO. There's reasons why the various reloading specialty tools are being sold.
Hope this helps ?!?
With regards,
357Mag
