Help- what am I doing wrong? Brass binding when bullet seating.

[Lawnboi]

My guess is a combo of friction caused by annealing and wet tumbling combined with maybe too much neck tension.

Skip wet tumble and see what happens

 

[deadwolf]

Just by the picture you may be over annealing in addition to everything else going on.


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[Pickettpuncher]

The annealing itself wouldn’t cause that. I don’t know enough about wet tumbling as I don’t do that but if it makes the case mouth sticky I wouldn’t think that would collapse the case like that either. It could be a combination of the dry case mouths, and a slightly undersized bushing.

 

[sndmn11]

We use norma 300wsm brass and 175 LRX, no issues at all with RCBS full length resizing die. I would take a piece of brass and rechamfer to see if that solves it, then address whatever die you are using.

 

[Lawnboi]

The mark on your bullet also suggests some pretty extraordinary seating force

 

[deadwolf]

The annealing itself wouldn’t cause that. I don’t know enough about wet tumbling as I don’t do that but if it makes the case mouth sticky I wouldn’t think that would collapse the case like that either. It could be a combination of the dry case mouths, and a slightly undersized bushing.

Yes, which is why I said it was in addition to everything else : )


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[Sled]

Those case necks look overdone. Are they glowing prior to quenching?

 

[nhyrum]

Yeah, annealing and tumbling wouldn't cause that, but if you're not using a temperature indicating paint like tempilaq, you should. I think the bigger bushing will be your best. I personally prefer to measure for bushings using an empty case and measuring the wall thickness and actually measuring a bullet to make sure they are what they should be. Not just measuring one either, made 9 multiple measurements and take an average

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[MallardSX2]

I was going to say your using the wrong sized bullet but I didn't want to insult you. lol

 

[Tuby27]

Those case necks look overdone. Are they glowing prior to quenching?

No, case mouth start to glow before and the flame turns a slight orange before I stop. No quenching.

 

[madcalfe]

how many seconds do you keep the heat on them for? I anneal the same as you but your brass looks quite a bit darker than when I do mine. I usually only do 8-10 seconds

 

[Pickettpuncher]

No, case mouth start to glow before and the flame turns a slight orange before I stop. No quenching.

Isn’t any glowing a bit too much? I’ve tried an healing using your method and gave up cause I wasn’t sure I was actually doing any good lol. Without templiq it’s all a guess

 

[Tuby27]

how many seconds do you keep the heat on them for? I anneal the same as you but your brass looks quite a bit darker than when I do mine. I usually only do 8-10 seconds

So I just did these again. These were previously annealed, resized/deburred/chamfered, wet tumbled, and ready to load. These were not shot yet after the initial prep.

I decided to anneal these again, about 10 seconds using a spiral flame bernzomatic torch, not a pencil flame torch. Just enough for the case mouth to start turning orange and flame to turn from blue to orange.

I will resize them again then seat. I just did 4 this way and seating was super easy. No more binding.

The pics make them darker than they appear, I guess it’s the background. The ones in my white desk are the 4 from the lower right on the yellow pad.

 

[Sled]

So I just did these again. These were previously annealed, resized/deburred/chamfered, wet tumbled, and ready to load. These were not shot yet after the initial prep.

I decided to anneal these again, about 10 seconds using a spiral flame bernzomatic torch, not a pencil flame torch. Just enough for the case mouth to start turning orange and flame to turn from blue to orange.

I will resize them again then seat. I just did 4 this way and seating was super easy. No more binding.

The pics make them darker than they appear, I guess it’s the background. The ones in my white desk are the 4 from the lower right on the yellow pad.

Those 4 look like mine. The set on the right look like a steak I forgot on the grill once.

 

[Sled]

Take calipers and measure the difference in neck size of the new ones and cooked version. You may have changed the diameter.

 

[4ester]

So you ruled out the seating die/crimp setting. I’m catching up….. lol

1)Measure your .333 bushing and make sure it is truly that measurement. .003 is not too much.

2) Wet tumbling does remove the carbon from the neck, so personally I’d definitely be using graphite neck lube regardless. A mandrel would help too.

3) Do you have any brass you haven’t annealed to rule that out? You should also anneal the cases in a fireformed state…. And resize afterward.


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[Tuby27]

A couple things I suspected.

So I went back to do what I first did prior to changing the seating stem. Before, I used a spiral flame torch, then change to pencil flame torch when I also changed the seating stem. I think using the pencil flame, I wasn’t heating low enough on the brass. Whereas the spiral flame is more open and covers more area (neck, shoulder, under shoulder).
I re-annealed using the unfired/previously prep brass using the spiral flame, then resized, and chamfered, primed and powdered and the LRX seated easily, no more binding.

Another suspicion is that, (I think I read somewhere) the brass has “memory” so if you don’t load it right away after prepping (including annealing) after sitting a while, which these were, the case mouth/neck/shoulder gets harden or shrinks.

Another suspicion is the brass gets harden after annealing, room temp cooled, then wet tumbled, makes it harder. One thing I also did was after wet tumbling, I put them in a plastic jar and blow dry them with hair dryer, dries within minutes, the heat from the blow dryer may also have an effect. But they are golden clean, like brand new brass with this method.

Learning experience, I messed up about 15 Norma brass playing around, trying figure it out and to change things. Now to cut the shoulders off those 15 rounds to deprime and save those primers.

 

[BRTreedogs]

Another suspicion is the brass gets harden after annealing, room temp cooled, then wet tumbled, makes it harder.

Annealing softens the brass.

 

[Tuby27]

Annealing softens the brass.

Yea sorry, that what I meant to say. That’s probably why it bind at that point/location on the brass. Thanks.

 

[BRTreedogs]

Yea sorry, that what I meant to say. That’s probably why it bind at that point/location on the brass. Thanks.

I think with the pencil you may have softened it to much.
Only time I kinked brass like your pictures I had gotten confused with the sizer and seater setup and had the die to far down.