I have a new rifle project in the offing, a .30BR. I am ordering and gathering up bits and pieces. Since I already had a full box of blue box 6BR, I decided to expand and turn a few case necks. This is the most that I have expanded up case necks, although I have considerable experience making 6 PPC cases from ..220 Russian. Not wanting to eat into my hundred cases with learning mistakes, I rummaged through a few drawers and boxes and came up with a solitary .220 Russian case that had not been turned, and did my first trial expansion on it stair stepping up with progressively larger mandrels, lubed with some case turning lube that I bought back in the stone age, that turned out to be less than perfect for this amount of expanding. Oh well, that was why I used the odd case. The effort was higher than I wanted, with the result that the end of neck runout ended up at about .005 even though I had been very careful....not good enough.
A couple of days later, I remembered that I had ordered a bottle of Lucas Semi-Synthetic Assembly Lube, (probably because of tip I must have read on this site) and set about expanding my first 6BR case. I dipped a fresh Q tip in the lube, withdrawing a much thicker, sticker liquid than any other turning lube that I had tried. So far, so good. I wiped off the .25 cal. mandrel (going up in steps) to remove all of the previous oil, and applied a generous coating of the new stuff, before dropping the mandrel into the PMA die body on my Rock Chucker. Being sure not to put too much in the case neck., so that it would not run down into the case body, I lubed the inside of the neck and carefully did the first expansion, using the technique that I had found worked the best for making PPC cases with the least runout. I repeated the process with each successive mandrel, applying a little more lube for each step, as well as turning the case and multistroking the press for each expander. The effort for all was what I was looking for, as was the runout when I was finished. Bottom line, this Lucas stuff is really good for expanding, the best that I have tried.
A couple of days later, I remembered that I had ordered a bottle of Lucas Semi-Synthetic Assembly Lube, (probably because of tip I must have read on this site) and set about expanding my first 6BR case. I dipped a fresh Q tip in the lube, withdrawing a much thicker, sticker liquid than any other turning lube that I had tried. So far, so good. I wiped off the .25 cal. mandrel (going up in steps) to remove all of the previous oil, and applied a generous coating of the new stuff, before dropping the mandrel into the PMA die body on my Rock Chucker. Being sure not to put too much in the case neck., so that it would not run down into the case body, I lubed the inside of the neck and carefully did the first expansion, using the technique that I had found worked the best for making PPC cases with the least runout. I repeated the process with each successive mandrel, applying a little more lube for each step, as well as turning the case and multistroking the press for each expander. The effort for all was what I was looking for, as was the runout when I was finished. Bottom line, this Lucas stuff is really good for expanding, the best that I have tried.
