Redding Competition seating die problem/ question

[RonAKA]

New Lapua Palma typically 2.006 to 2.007". First firing moves a couple thousandths and after second firing I trim about 25/100 slightly to a standard length of 2.010".

That is short of the 2.015 SAAMI max case length, so that should not be the issue.

 

[CH Luke]

After your second firing, annealing, and trimming are you chamfering the inside and outside of the necks before trying to seat another bullet? I suspect you are but just needed to ask?

Yes. Went back and did both again just in case the stainless media was messing it up. No difference.
Thanks for asking.

 

[CH Luke]

I had a problem with a Redding competition die in .338 RUM a few years back, it shipped with a shorter seating insert rod (NOT the sliding sleeve) than it should have had. Screwing the die further into the press to fully seat the bullet allowed the case mouth to hit the top of the die slightly bulging the case at the neck/shoulder junction.

A call to Redding and a new longer seating insert insert was immediately sent. I also make sure that the while the sliding sleeve may hit the caseholder, the outer body has about a 1/4" to go and that the sliding sleeve still has a little travel left at the top of the ram stroke.

Don't know if I described that accurately.

Interesting. I can visualize what you are saying. To be more clear, when the seating die hits that "bump" I was talking about it is nowhere near the caseholder. Pretty certain it is hitting the top of the case.

 

[CH Luke]

Have a couple of new theories on the cause of this apparently unusual problem that I am targeting to explore.
1) Thanks to Scott at Redding I am going to check the inside of the neck down near the shoulder for the infamous donut. I could envision the carbide expander hitting the donut on the way down causing the neck to "flange" open. Going to check this out tonight. Since the expander still has the same feel on the way back up I'm guessing that might not be it.
2) Thanks to my new friends George Tanner and John Perkins and others here I now believe I do not have a "no turn" chamber. Time to start turning necks.

You sure learn a lot here when you have problems to try to figure out. Bet I can get a few "amens" to that.

 

[jlow]

This is likely your answer

If you over anneal, you will get you necks too soft (describe how you anneal to us). If you combine this with cleaning too vigorously with SS-media (i.e. Too many cases, too long, etc), the tip of the cases mouth will peen, rollover which means it will be much thicker. Combine this with a tight neck chamber, you will get exactly what you see - a loaded round that will not fit a tight neck chamber.

To figure if you are getting peening, run your finger nail along the case neck from the shoulder to the neck opening, a good neck will allow your nail to get to the end and drop off. A peened neck will catch your nail just before it gets to the end...

So you are ignoring this? I don't mind if you say you checked and this is not the problem, but to ignore it is just rude.

 

[RonAKA]

Have a couple of new theories on the cause of this apparently unusual problem that I am targeting to explore.
1) Thanks to Scott at Redding I am going to check the inside of the neck down near the shoulder for the infamous donut. I could envision the carbide expander hitting the donut on the way down causing the neck to "flange" open. Going to check this out tonight. Since the expander still has the same feel on the way back up I'm guessing that might not be it.
2) Thanks to my new friends George Tanner and John Perkins and others here I now believe I do not have a "no turn" chamber. Time to start turning necks.

You sure learn a lot here when you have problems to try to figure out. Bet I can get a few "amens" to that.

On #1, That was one of my first suggestions, but I think you came back with measurements that indicated there was no donut?

On #2, I saw these comments/measurements:

"Just seated a brand new Lapua Palma. OD is .336 before and .338" after bullet seated."
"Second firings were .341 to .342 at the mouth. Mid neck were all .342. The neck near the shoulder .343."

This indicates a loaded cartridge neck diameter of 0.338" in a neck that tapers from 0.344" to 0.3425". That is a minimum of 4 thou clearance. Minimum SAAMI is 0.3462 tapering to 0.3442. So you are about 0.002 under minimum SAAMI. My thoughts are that is a fairly generous no turn neck diameter. With your current brass I suspect you could go 1 or 2 thou tighter without neck turning.

 

[CH Luke]

So you are ignoring this? I don't mind if you say you checked and this is not the problem, but to ignore it is just rude.

My apologies to jlow. I've followed his posts regularly and respect them a lot but some how missed responding to him. That is embarrassing.

The good news is there has been a number of good responses and that I have several good lines to approach further investigating this problem. Also want to be sure to make the point that while I've learned a lot and targeted a couple specific new points that I came across this weekend that my search is certainly not over and I have looked in to and do plan to pursue a great # of these suggestions and report back on their results.

This problem emerged on the first action from rounds 1650 to 2450. It was not a problem however for up to 5x firings using the same annealing process. My suspicion was there was some carbon build up that came in to play and I replaced the action.

On the second action (also more freebore for 200's) when I checked my base to shoulder with a stripped bolt actually liked about .001" more length. I do suspect from the feedback received here that this is also a tighter chamber diameter. Note that vertical has never been a problem with either barrel though. Of course that could just be being masked by my poor wind reading and body positioning that troubles my horizontal consistency.

To jlow's question on how I anneal. I use an Annealeez after every firing. When I set it up I spent plenty of time with old brass in a dark room. I learned to warm up the motor for several minutes for consistency and started with a stop watch at 4 seconds one piece at a time. One of the keys I looked for was that maroon color which I got at about the 6-7 second count. A visual comparison of that brass to new Lapua shows identical coloring - for what that's worth.

Over-annealing is a possibility because this problem has been consistent over two actions and my annealing process has been consistent. While I would guess the problem isn't annealing I had replied to other posts on this topic that since I have 200 new Lapua Palma's that I do intend to split the first box in to two groups of 50 and anneal one and not the other. I need to get through the first firings though I intend to do all that via load development for the new Berger 200.20X's I have.

To jlow's advice about too vigorous of media cleaning. "The tip of the cases mouth will peen, rollover which means it will be much thicker." Another possibility. In my process I rotary tumble (Frankford Arsenal) in stainless media twice - first after firing and de-priming (for 2-2.5 hours pending # of rounds ranging from 50-100) - with 8 lbs of media. The second cleaning after seating, trimming and debur/chamfer) from 45-90 minutes. [I hate cleaning primer pockets!]

On a separate response I did mention having gone back and chamfered and deburred a few of the offending 2X and was not able to chambered a seated round. So this evening I ran my finger nail over about 10 of the sized 2X brass looking "to figure if you are getting peening, run your finger nail along the case neck from the shoulder to the neck opening, a good neck will allow your nail to get to the end and drop off. A peened neck will catch your nail just before it gets to the end..."

Yes I did catch a tiny bit of a lip on the mouth of the brass on a part of the circumference - as little as a tenth to as much as nearly half. Checked a few of the hundreds of other "pre-maturing retired" Lapua Palma brass and saw the same thing. This was a very expensive lesson to learn.

jlow: Time to back off the amount of time on the rotary tumbler. Any recommendation on how much time to tumble with stainless? I am going to re-run my annealing setup and definitely back off some of the time - maybe 4.5-5.0 seconds?

Thanks to everyone for your responses. More good news - I learned a bunch more today!

 

[CH Luke]

On #1, That was one of my first suggestions, but I think you came back with measurements that indicated there was no donut?

On #2, I saw these comments/measurements:

"Just seated a brand new Lapua Palma. OD is .336 before and .338" after bullet seated."
"Second firings were .341 to .342 at the mouth. Mid neck were all .342. The neck near the shoulder .343."

This indicates a loaded cartridge neck diameter of 0.338" in a neck that tapers from 0.344" to 0.3425". That is a minimum of 4 thou clearance. Minimum SAAMI is 0.3462 tapering to 0.3442. So you are about 0.002 under minimum SAAMI. My thoughts are that is a fairly generous no turn neck diameter. With your current brass I suspect you could go 1 or 2 thou tighter without neck turning.

Yes Ron, thank you. Believe it or not I had never encountered the donut concept below and like a dumbass I was looking on the outside of the neck/shoulder junction. After talking to Scott today and discovering I needed to look inside with a paper clip or small nail I did not encounter a donut ridge. I even had some 3X fired's that I checked.

I had been using a .338" bushing before with new brass and had gone to the .337 with 1X fired's after I encountered about three (of 100) that needed it to chamber. When I had this problem on the old action I had gone to .336 and it helped get about 60/100 rounds to chamber for a third firing. My concern of course was the amount of tension was getting high which causes more pressure. Everything was firing consistent verticals but of course here in Michigan the temperature ranges so much to change your vertical adjustments so it's hard to differentiate tension versus temperature change.

 

[Mike F H]

The first thing I would do is delete the tumbling in stainless steel pins,brush the inside neck with a bristle brush,wipe the outside neck with a coarse cloth or fine steel wool and if you trim and chamfer the cases,polish the case mouth with a wad of steel wool.Before loading,dry lube the inside of the case necks.If it doesn't work after that it is between you and the seating die.

 

[RonAKA]

I had been using a .338" bushing before with new brass and had gone to the .337 with 1X fired's after I encountered about three (of 100) that needed it to chamber. When I had this problem on the old action I had gone to .336 and it helped get about 60/100 rounds to chamber for a third firing. My concern of course was the amount of tension was getting high which causes more pressure. Everything was firing consistent verticals but of course here in Michigan the temperature ranges so much to change your vertical adjustments so it's hard to differentiate tension versus temperature change.

If the last thing to touch your neck is the expander ball, then I don't think it matters that much what neck bushing you use. If you go smaller you are working your brass more, but the expander ball should be bringing it back up to the same size (or pretty close) regardless.

I'm still thinking soft brass is the leading potential cause.

 

[CH Luke]

The first thing I would do is delete the tumbling in stainless steel pins,brush the inside neck with a bristle brush,wipe the outside neck with a coarse cloth or fine steel wool and if you trim and chamfer the cases,polish the case mouth with a wad of steel wool.Before loading,dry lube the inside of the case necks.If it doesn't work after that it is between you and the seating die.

But Mike, if I did that I would be back to cleaning primer pockets. Man I just hate that! Stainless leaves the pockets pristine.
I'm not looking for pretty brass when I use stainless. Just clean pockets and then to make sure the outside lube and shavings are gone.

 

[jlow]

My apologies to jlow. I've followed his posts regularly and respect them a lot but some how missed responding to him. That is embarrassing.

The good news is there has been a number of good responses and that I have several good lines to approach further investigating this problem. Also want to be sure to make the point that while I've learned a lot and targeted a couple specific new points that I came across this weekend that my search is certainly not over and I have looked in to and do plan to pursue a great # of these suggestions and report back on their results.

This problem emerged on the first action from rounds 1650 to 2450. It was not a problem however for up to 5x firings using the same annealing process. My suspicion was there was some carbon build up that came in to play and I replaced the action.

On the second action (also more freebore for 200's) when I checked my base to shoulder with a stripped bolt actually liked about .001" more length. I do suspect from the feedback received here that this is also a tighter chamber diameter. Note that vertical has never been a problem with either barrel though. Of course that could just be being masked by my poor wind reading and body positioning that troubles my horizontal consistency.

To jlow's question on how I anneal. I use an Annealeez after every firing. When I set it up I spent plenty of time with old brass in a dark room. I learned to warm up the motor for several minutes for consistency and started with a stop watch at 4 seconds one piece at a time. One of the keys I looked for was that maroon color which I got at about the 6-7 second count. A visual comparison of that brass to new Lapua shows identical coloring - for what that's worth.

Over-annealing is a possibility because this problem has been consistent over two actions and my annealing process has been consistent. While I would guess the problem isn't annealing I had replied to other posts on this topic that since I have 200 new Lapua Palma's that I do intend to split the first box in to two groups of 50 and anneal one and not the other. I need to get through the first firings though I intend to do all that via load development for the new Berger 200.20X's I have.

To jlow's advice about too vigorous of media cleaning. "The tip of the cases mouth will peen, rollover which means it will be much thicker." Another possibility. In my process I rotary tumble (Frankford Arsenal) in stainless media twice - first after firing and de-priming (for 2-2.5 hours pending # of rounds ranging from 50-100) - with 8 lbs of media. The second cleaning after seating, trimming and debur/chamfer) from 45-90 minutes. [I hate cleaning primer pockets!]

On a separate response I did mention having gone back and chamfered and deburred a few of the offending 2X and was not able to chambered a seated round. So this evening I ran my finger nail over about 10 of the sized 2X brass looking "to figure if you are getting peening, run your finger nail along the case neck from the shoulder to the neck opening, a good neck will allow your nail to get to the end and drop off. A peened neck will catch your nail just before it gets to the end..."

Yes I did catch a tiny bit of a lip on the mouth of the brass on a part of the circumference - as little as a tenth to as much as nearly half. Checked a few of the hundreds of other "pre-maturing retired" Lapua Palma brass and saw the same thing. This was a very expensive lesson to learn.

jlow: Time to back off the amount of time on the rotary tumbler. Any recommendation on how much time to tumble with stainless? I am going to re-run my annealing setup and definitely back off some of the time - maybe 4.5-5.0 seconds?

Thanks to everyone for your responses. More good news - I learned a bunch more today!

Thanks CH Luke for writing – much appreciated. I look at these troubleshooting discussions as a two way street i.e. hopefully we can be of help to solve a problem, but also at the same time to learn ourselves of sources of problems that we ourselves have not run across before.

I should clarify my comments about annealing being a potential source of problem. Certainly over annealing is bad and something to avoid and can cause many problems, however, the unfortunate truth is proper anneal can also be a source of this problem.

The reason is proper annealing does in fact soften the case neck. Even though it makes the necks more consistent and returns the necks to say when they are new, they are in fact softer than say necks that never gets annealed (that of course presents a different set of problems....). The way I look at this is not to say annealing is bad, it is not, but that it will predispose our brass to peening if we are not careful.

I think this is the reason why we commonly have people saying that they clean their brass with SS media for hours and they never seen any peening – this may indeed be true for those who have brass that has significantly work hardened but they never annealed. I would not change your annealing time unless you know it is over annealing.

As much as I am happy to help you find a cause (BTW, it was powderbrake who came up with this idea first), I agree that this is disappointing to have this peening problem.

My own technique which I have refined based on my own experience and much input from others on this board is to now 1) clean after firing and de-prime for 45 min with no more than 50 .308 cases and with 10 lb of SS media (more media, more cushion, less brass less collision).

I do in fact do a second clean after sizing to get rid of the lube, but I only do this with the same case number but only for 5 min. You will find that at least with hot water, Dawn, and Imperial lube that this takes all the lube off).

The bad news is this abbreviated method does not always clean the primer pockets 100% clean as sometimes I see a little at the bottom. I can take that off with a twist with a Sinclair primer pocket uniformer – it’s not ideal but I accept this as the lesser of the two evil.

 

[savagedasher]

The bullets are .308 with .016 per side of the neck you have to double that the loaded round should end up at .340
L

 

[Rust]

Should have mentioned this with my post about competition seater die seating rods as another possibility.

You may want to check your chamber with Cerrosafe (or have a smith check it) to determine the actual neck diameter of your chamber. All my competition rifles have tighter than SAAMI spec "no turn" chambers. My loaded .308 runs .3375" to .338" neck diameter using my specific Lapua brass. It is possible that yours could have been spec'd brass with less neck thickness, only way to tell is to cast the chamber.

One of my rifles has a .003" clearance on diameter which is fairly tight for a no turn so I check brass/loaded rounds carefully. The others are at .004".

Of course you could have a zero fit no turn which is a misnomer since brass has to take a very light cleanup mainly to uniform thickness all the way around but that is very rare. And finally you could have an actual tight neck chamber which would absolutely require neck turning.

Gets complicated fast, doesn't it.

 

[CH Luke]

Thanks CH Luke for writing – much appreciated. I look at these troubleshooting discussions as a two way street i.e. hopefully we can be of help to solve a problem, but also at the same time to learn ourselves of sources of problems that we ourselves have not run across before.

I should clarify my comments about annealing being a potential source of problem. Certainly over annealing is bad and something to avoid and can cause many problems, however, the unfortunate truth is proper anneal can also be a source of this problem.

The reason is proper annealing does in fact soften the case neck. Even though it makes the necks more consistent and returns the necks to say when they are new, they are in fact softer than say necks that never gets annealed (that of course presents a different set of problems....). The way I look at this is not to say annealing is bad, it is not, but that it will predispose our brass to peening if we are not careful.

I think this is the reason why we commonly have people saying that they clean their brass with SS media for hours and they never seen any peening – this may indeed be true for those who have brass that has significantly work hardened but they never annealed. I would not change your annealing time unless you know it is over annealing.

As much as I am happy to help you find a cause (BTW, it was powderbrake who came up with this idea first), I agree that this is disappointing to have this peening problem.

My own technique which I have refined based on my own experience and much input from others on this board is to now 1) clean after firing and de-prime for 45 min with no more than 50 .308 cases and with 10 lb of SS media (more media, more cushion, less brass less collision).

I do in fact do a second clean after sizing to get rid of the lube, but I only do this with the same case number but only for 5 min. You will find that at least with hot water, Dawn, and Imperial lube that this takes all the lube off).

The bad news is this abbreviated method does not always clean the primer pockets 100% clean as sometimes I see a little at the bottom. I can take that off with a twist with a Sinclair primer pocket uniformer – it’s not ideal but I accept this as the lesser of the two evil.

I do recall reading that same advice on annealing and did add more than half of a second bag of media and did keep to smaller batch sizes some but not all of the time. Definitely will now. Will also follow your advice on batch size.

For annealing as I mentioned I am going to take the next box of brass in to two test/control batches of 50 and make the next 200 rounds get me to the same 2X fired place and do much better measurements with a new micrometer paying attention to the differences in neck thickness.

This will take me 4-6 weeks with the holidays and work travel at which point I intend to report back here. At that point I will have secured the necessary tools to begin neck turning the brass.

This is the way forward as I see it now. As always I value the good advice received here and hope to look forward to much more of it

 

[ireload2]

In post 52 it is recommended that more media and less brass will reduce the peening. Many years ago I found that I could peen case necks with too many cases using walnut media. The peening came from the cases hitting each other due to an excessive number of cases for the amount of media used.

 

[jlow]

I do recall reading that same advice on annealing and did add more than half of a second bag of media and did keep to smaller batch sizes some but not all of the time. Definitely will now. Will also follow your advice on batch size.

For annealing as I mentioned I am going to take the next box of brass in to two test/control batches of 50 and make the next 200 rounds get me to the same 2X fired place and do much better measurements with a new micrometer paying attention to the differences in neck thickness.

This will take me 4-6 weeks with the holidays and work travel at which point I intend to report back here. At that point I will have secured the necessary tools to begin neck turning the brass.

This is the way forward as I see it now. As always I value the good advice received here and hope to look forward to much more of it

I think you will be fine with the adjustments to your SS-media cleaning method. Since you have a tight chamber rifle, you pretty much have to neck turn and that should take the peening off and you will be back to the races in no time.

 

[RonAKA]

When you take all your symptoms together it seems to me that the case neck is buckling for some reason, and the result is thicker brass at the bottom of the neck after the bullet seating process. All I can think of is that the top of the neck is contacting something in your seating die, or that just simple bullet friction inside the neck is pushing the brass back. If that theory is right I would worry that neck turning the brass would make the neck weaker, and possibly make the problem worse, not better. I still find it concerning that your .3078 to .308" diameter bullet in a new case results in a consistent 0.338" OD. That suggests a 0.015" brass thickness, that is fine. And the resulting 0.338" OD is fine in your chamber. So the real question is why is a once fired and annealed case growing to the 0.343" range near the shoulder when you seat a bullet. Have not seen a real good answer to that question yet...

 

[Fotheringill]

Only one small item of input here-

When you are measuring outside neck diameter, be aware that Redding bushing dies do NOT resize the entire length of the neck, but only 1/2 more or less. Measure near the neck opening, not further down. You can verify this with Redding.

 

[John Russell]

Only one small item of input here-

When you are measuring outside neck diameter, be aware that Redding bushing dies do NOT resize the entire length of the neck, but only 1/2 more or less. Measure near the neck opening, not further down. You can verify this with Redding.

What Forthingill said is 129%True!!

None of the bushingg dies size the whole neck - about 75 to 80 percent if you set the bushing for max sizing.

Measure the first 1/8 of the neck and go from there.

As for the rest - "When you take all your symptoms together it seems to me that the case neck is buckling for some reason, and the result is thicker brass at the bottom of the neck after the bullet seating process"...

... none of the symptoms suggest "crumpling" of the neck - and so far, without a chamber cast to know what the actual diameter of the chamber neck is, talking about measurements of neck clearence is pure fantasy.

Make a cast, or get it casted and go from there.