Another Wilson Die ??

I don't know that I agree with Jackie on the one-piece die being BETTER but I went and measured to find that on a custom-fitted die the shoulder DOES engage to act as a guide soon after the neck starts being sized. When the neck enters the sizing portion of a one-piece die THE CASE ISN'T SUPPORTED in the 7 chamberings I checked, but it engages quite soon. This is only true of those cases which have been designed with minimum taper, typical BR cases fit this description.

I have no trouble at all maintaining under .001 runout with bushing dies, Jones dies, One-piece dies from Redding, Forster and RCBS as well as custom made..... And I'll disagree seriously with anyone who believes that "eccentricity of the die" or "cheapo dies" ever causes crooked ammo. I'd like to have someone describe for me the machining method which results in a "crooked sizing die".


CHetahmans problem is that his neck is too big, his die doesn't fit his gun or his brass is improperly fireformed. All the support in the world can't account for improper fit and all the sizing in the world can't fix brass that's been formed crooked. And all the "alignment" in the world can't fix crooked brass. And a neck that's more than a thou or two over the brass simply cannot be maintained straight. Especially not while squeezing it down for .003 interference fit......

Straight brass is necessary for good aggs. Fitted necks are typically just a given on this board but I suspect thet CHeetahman's necks aren't.

al
 
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Formed crooked....

I'll need to know how to fireform brass crooked so when somebody takes me up on my bet I'll have the worst of it. Seems like you posted this before and I just can't find it.
 
Easy........just fireform with excess headspace.


Then try to "fix" it by seating long, then grease your cases.....You'll end up truing caseheads in your lathe before long. These are all great ways to get crooked brass.


To fix the problem one must buy the services of a gunsmith who understands crush-fit and one will never fight eccentricity problems again.


My frav'rite gunsmith makes bushing dies to high tolerance but he also makes brass for his rifles, brass which must be severiously palmed home on fireform and which FALLS out after FF.

I made 150 cases recently and I set the HS so bleedin' tight that when I went out the next morning to fire the rest of them I very nearly took 'em apart and resized.....I greased my lugs, padded my palm and forged ahead. The fired cases FELL out. And they measure dead on straight like a half-thou random wobble which will disappear by the third firing.


al
 
Alinwa

If you read my post you would see that I used virgin brass and the runout was less then two thou. The runout did not get bad until I resized the cases. Jackie made reference to brass not centering up in the die and this may be the cause of the runout due to one side hitting more then the other. I stated that once I spun the cases on the runout gage that you could see on the worse ones that they spun "crooked" which tells me that jackie has a valid point. The rifle does have a factory chamber but I don't see where that would matter.
 
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Just out of curiosity, why don't you see if the runout is in the same relative position to the die, by marking the die (on a piece of tape) and the case head (with a marker, indexed to the die mark, while it is fully inserted in the die). If the eccentricity comes out in the same place relative to the case head mark on several cases, you may have a die problem.

The part about the factory chamber works like this. Tight necked Benchrest chambers have clearance on a loaded round such that a fired case is only sized .004 at the most. A factory chambers greater clearance means that this is increased to .008 or more. The more that you reduce a case neck, without the body held in positive alignment, the greater the runout is likely to be due to random case alignment and brass yield differences around the neck. Also, unless your Wilson die is custom fitted, it is likely that there is some clearance between the body of the case and the die, even when the case is fully inserted. On the other hand, with a tight neck chamber, and a fitted die, good results can be had. For factory chambers, I have had reports, from reliable sources, that a two stage sizing process using a body die and a Lee Collet die, will actually give superior results to a FL die with a floating bushing. I would still opt for a Wilson type seater, since friends have seen a greater variance of ogive to case head measurement with even the fanciest press seaters as compared with the Wilson.
 
CHeetahman,

You didn't tell us what you're shooting but my SWAG is that to fix your problem you'll have to neck UP.......

Neck you virginal cases UP so that you must run a die back down the necks just to get them to chamber. This is called "setting the crush-fit headspace". Set the false shoulder such that you must heel the bolt closed firmly with your palm. Foreform with a stout load of fast powder using a light bullet......SLAPPP that brass. You get one chance to get it right. The first shot either makes or ruins your brass.


Properly SLAPPED the brass should come out with less than a thou of runout.

Now you necksize only and the case will stay straight BUT......here's where the factory chamber becomes a problem. To reset the neck to hold a bullet you must move it too much. (the neck)... The fitted necks exhibited by custom chamberings serve two major functions, they allow you to "clean up" or turn necks for concentricity and more importantly they keep initial neck clearance down. Properly set up the neck of a loaded round will only have a thou or two of clearance so that when you fire it it only blows out 2 or 3 thou and collapses or "springs" back about a thou......it's easy to reset to grip the bullet while only swaging it a couple more thou.


Bottom line, virgin brass is soft and hideously crooked. It's like a lump of rough-formed modeling clay ready to be molded and fired. The act of firing forms and "sets" or hardens it.

Moving brass more than 3-4 thousandths will always result in differential sizing. If you've got excess neck clearance (anything over .002 total) you CANNOT maintain sizing concentricity with less than .001 final runout.........not with all the support in the world. Springback ensures that.


Springback occurs on both planes, circumferential and linear. I've seen banana'd cases that would spring back three thousandths after coming out of the die. A neck or case body will only spring a thou in diameter but over the length of the case springback can result in 3-4 thou of crookedyness.



THe old "canted caseheads" conundrum.


al
 
Al

That makes sense. I tried a bushing one thou smaller and that helped a great deal.

My biggest question is why didn't the brass get all that runout when I first sized the virgin brass? why after it was fired?
 
I will tell you one thing everyone should check, your shell holders. I had a 223 shell holder that was improperly machined. The contact point was on the bevel at the front of the extractor groove NOT the base of the case. I dremeled a bigger bevel on the shell holder to allow the case to properly rest on the base. The case was then much better aligned with the die whereas before it would lean a little bit.
 
At the moment, I'm using a Hornady match die in 6ppc. It has had some
modifications. Nothing changed about the body sizing, only the bushing setup. The body taper in my die, and I have two of them , does not match
the case taper of my cases. Rather the sizing is slightly more at the
upper end near the shoulder.My cases are reduced by 3 tenths at the base
but about 3 thous at the shoulder end. This causes the case to be guided
about 3/8 of an inch before it hits the bushing. the remainder of the case
is gently shrunk in a progressive way. I have jigs for gauging all aspects
of the case, sized and unsized all with .0001 dials . The sizing
die Which I'm using is very good. Actually as good as I have found. Cases
ready for seating have .0002 runout. I do size with a wilson on occasion
and loaded round concentricity is better. this is for one reason only. The neck
sized case is larger and better aligned in the seater. My seaters are made
with the same reamers as used in the gun. when you add zero clearance
in the seater, the numbers get very small.
 
CHeetahman,

Try measuring after you've fired but BEFORE you resize, see what the rifle's making.

al
 
Bob Kingsbury,


I guess that makes sense. For a die to resize brass so that it's .003 under your chamber it must be at least .004 smaller than your chamber at the shoulder. With a case that's tapered 10 or 12 thou in the body that seems right, it starts guiding clear back in the middle of the body. I've never dared to set a resize die that tight. I know of others who do that also but I set mine to be only .002 total difference for a sizing effect of a thou or less. The dies that I checked are all custom grinds and none of them size more than .002 total. The last three I've had done I just went .002 under, tapered parallel to the casewalls and they work well. I've got a WSM where I had the resize die tapered such that it's .002 at the shoulder and .003 at the base (exactly opposite your setup) but it's just sitting here waiting for an action so I can't comment on it.

interesting.


BTW, do your cases grow? My guess is that they do.....?


al
 
Al

When I spun the brass that had been fired it was one too two thou runout when I sized it thats when it got into the three to five thou range. The die is completely clean as well as the bushing.

I had cases that were turned to clean up the neck that had been fired and had one thou or half a thou runout sized them and the same thing
 
Alinwa,
Yes my cases grow, but not as fast as I would have thought.
I think I have trimmed twice in 25 firings. In a chamber type
seater,any clearance in body fit, will cost you runout. The case
simply cannot sit in the center of it. A seater stem that
contacts the bullet farther down than it needs to, and most
do is also giving up alignment. If the cavity in the stem is to small
hence to far up the bullet towards the point, there is always
the chance that a bullet will miss the cavity.Most cavity's are
twice as big as they need to be. Some are not perfectly centered either.
I have seen loaded ammo, where the case is not true, but the bullet
was seated straight, on axis with the body
 
OK OK so it might take a minute for y'all to remember this thread from a couple weeks ago........

Jackie, I tried to get these pictures up before but my Kodak Gallery has been on the fritz.

This is in reference to the question of support when the neck enters the sizing portion. Here I'm sizing down some 6.5 brass to 6X47L and as you can see the case is NOT supported as the neck enters the die in this case....case #3 is fully sized and as you can see the neck has been dragged back into a sort of alignment but it still started with the off-center cant. It would take a custom die to add support while necking down this 6.5 neck. I'm using a 6BR die.

Case #4 is a 6BR case for perspective.
 

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This might be a better picture of the offset induced by sizing. I've also included a pic of the 6BR held in a set of jaws along with the 6.5 case. As you can see they are very similar.

al
 

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Bob that is correct. In fact, this die will support them better once they're blown out to 6BR dimensions at the shoulder. What I'm trying to illustrate is how the neck will always collapse in an uneven fashion and to show how much it's misaligned. I did 150 of these and maybe 10-15% came out even. I'll guess that over 50% were offset as much as this picture shows.


Now, once they were free of the die they looked like case #3, they looked pretty well aligned because the shoulders of the case DID engage and forced the neck over. These cases fireformed straight though because all of this work is done before the brass gets slapped and the rifle is short-chambered such that not only must the cases be fully inserted but the shoulder is actually pushed back and re-set for crush-fit headspace. The cases fireformed straight but with a very irregular inside-out donut ;)

Here's another pic to show how the neckturner saw the jacked over shoulders.

al
 

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Some good advice above for sure---use this and you will know if you are accomplishing your goal--http://www.benchrest.com/hnh/[/URL].
 
Crush fit

alinwa said:
To fix the problem one must buy the services of a gunsmith who understands crush-fit and one will never fight eccentricity problems again.
al
Click to expand...

Al,
I agree with your above statement. I purposely set up a barrel on a Savage single shot with a crush fit and began fireforming brass. The brass was damned near perfect after fireforming. I know gunsmiths set up Ackleys with a .004 crush fit but never heard of setting up a standard cal. in this way until I read one of your earlier posts and decided to try it; it works.
Chino69
 
This is all interesting & educational reading. I have a question: Who hones FL die necks to custom size? I have several that I have wanted to have done.
 
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