Tough to resize 7.62x51 lc 11

[mwells72774]

I have to decap and size in 2 seperate steps. Have to use a generous dallop of lube and it takes way too much pressure, I have to lock my arms and stand on tip toes to get it to size.

Is it worth trying to use? I got 10lbs pretty cheap but dont want to ruin my press and dies to make it work.

 

[Jimro]

Anneal first.

Resize second.

Trim third.

Then your once fired milsurp brass will be ready for have the primer crimp removed and loaded.

Yes it takes a while to anneal a batch of milsurp brass. The cost savings are worth it though, if you plan on using your brass for a while or are "4 reloads and chuck it" through a semi-auto.

Jimro

 

[rebs]

I have some RG head stamp 5.56 that was the same way when trying to size it. It got real dirty when I fired it, I am wondering if it is so hard that the neck didn't expand properly in the chamber when I shot it ?

 

[Bart B.]

Arsenal service brass was never intended to be reloaded. It's made hard and tough to resist damage in rough handling and use in combat environments. Match ammo cases were closer to commercial brass in hardness but they were often used in military sniper rifles so they were also not made to be reloaded. The only thing arsenals did as a courtesy to civilians was to stop crimping primers in their pockets so they would be easier to push out.

Annealing those Lake City 2011 cases may well make them too soft for more than one resizing and firing cycle. Especially if the back third of their length is so annealed. I think some folks protect the back two-thirds of the case by standing them in water as the flame's passed around their neck and shoulder.

I've never annealed a case so I'm no expert on the process. But I'm aware of the dangers of using brass too soft for safety. Others may be good at annealing and know the pitfalls to be avoided as well as the best tools and techniques to do it right; hopefully they'll chime in on this thread.

Rebs, I think that brass you mentioned was too hard for easy reloading. I've seen arsenal .30-06 and 7.62 NATO cases reloaded that did the same thing. RG is the headstamp code for the Radway Green arsenal in Great Britian.

 

[Jimro]

Some people do the "standing in water" method. And it works just fine.

However the annealing temp of brass is pretty high, around 600 degrees for just a few seconds (or around 500 degrees for an hour). Since you apply the flame to the thinnest portion of the neck/shoulder area, once you feel a little heat with your fingers I go ahead and drop the case into my steel tin.

The amount of heat (heat capacity) that the smallest portion of the brass in the case can hold is easily distributed through the rest of the case and the because of the masses involved drops below the annealing temp.

Engineers, please correct my math/logic if it is off, it has been years since I studied any sort of heat transfer. Say you have 10% of the mass of a case in the neck/shoulder area you are annealling. You heat it to 600 degrees and then drop it. Dynamics tells us that the heat will flow through conduction to the rest of the brass, as well as radiate through open space, and be wicked away by convection cooling. Double the mass, half the heat. Increase the mass 90% decrease the heat 90%. So even if 20% of the total mass was annealed, you would still get an 80% reduction in temp once the temp homogenized, around 120 degrees F, which is not enough to anneal the body or case head of the brass.

Anyways, that is why I don't use the water method any more.

Jimro

 

[HopeandChange]

Wells... WHAT LUBE are you using? That's the first thing we should be talking about. That is BEYOND WAY TOO MUCH force to size a simple 7.62-51 case. I size these sitting down with little to no effort on a single stage. If you're using ONE SHOT, God Forbid.... THROW IT OUT and get some DCL (Dillon Case Lube).

Likely you've got some sort of 240b fired brass or something.... it may not last long if the shoulder needs to be bumped back a huge amount.

Arsenal service brass was never intended to be reloaded. It's made hard and tough to resist damage in rough handling and use in combat environments.

False. One of the requirements on current mil ammo is that the annealing iris be visible. Hard brass splits at the necks and is less durable.

Match ammo cases were closer to commercial brass in hardness but they were often used in military sniper rifles so they were also not made to be reloaded. The only thing arsenals did as a courtesy to civilians was to stop crimping primers in their pockets so they would be easier to push out.

False. Match ammo cases are no closer to commercial than anything else. Match or LR cases are a higher quality of case. Current Mk 118LR indeed does not have a primer crimp. But crimps make no difference on decapping.

Annealing those Lake City 2011 cases may well make them too soft for more than one resizing and firing cycle. Especially if the back third of their length is so annealed. I think some folks protect the back two-thirds of the case by standing them in water as the flame's passed around their neck and shoulder.

Annealing ANY brass excessively will ruin its properties. Annealing LC brass correctly will only add to its useful life. None of the current state of the art annealing systems involve the water pan stuff. You really have to be clueless to heat the head up enough to soften it.

 

[snuffy]

HOPEANDCHANGE? Hows that working out for you? BartB has forgotten more than I know about match shooting, I'd listen to him if I were you.
'

If Wiley would just get some more smileys, I could put the one with the smilley eating popcorn as the fight ensues!

 

[HopeandChange]

HOPEANDCHANGE? Hows that working out for you? BartB has forgotten more than I know about match shooting, I'd listen to him if I were you.

Annealing? It's working good for me. I started doing it because I could FEEL the neck hardness inconsistencies when seating .308 bullets in Lapua Brass.

I hand anneal because I'm Cheap, and don't have room for a benchtop unit. But the difference is noticeable.

I don't understand what "match shooting" has to do with sizing LC brass or annealing though.

 

[F. Guffey]

Tough to resize 7.62x51 lc 11

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I have to decap and size in 2 separate steps. Have to use a generous dallop of lube and it takes way too much pressure, I have to lock my arms and stand on tip toes to get it to size.

Is it worth trying to use? I got 10 lbs. pretty cheap but don't want to ruin my press and dies to make it work.

mwells72774, I have purchases 1,400 cases for $14.00. that is cheap, I have purchased 800 30/06 rounds that were belted for .05 cents each, that was $40.00, again, cheap, cheap had nothing to do with sizing. I do not know what die, press and lube you are using. I have a lube I use to size cases with, when troubler shooting reloading/sizing problems I always being it with me, problem, the reloaders with the problem can not or will not acknowledge it exist, for them it must be Imperial and or Dillon in the bottle or can.

It is not easy for a reloader to look like they know what they are doing when they use both hands to lock over a press then use two hands and a foot when lowering the ram, the case was not designed for that type/kind of abuse, back to ‘WHO MEASURES?’.

A collector, shooter, reloader sent me a set of dies that belonged to his father, the dies were RCBS, in the sizing die there was a stuck case, I removed the case then proceeded to size cases, I stuck five cases in a row. I cleaned/wiped the die out with a towel on a dowel and continued, by the time I sized 40 cases the die was running like a doll buggy, I sent him the dies back with a case removal tool, by that time he had purchased another set of dies and decided to use the older set for back up, I have no ideal how he cleaned the dies, I do not know what chemicals he used, the dies served his day for years without a problem, then suddenly and without warning???? I would have offered to trade but for obvious reasons that would not work.

Then there is the sizing on one operation and de-capping on another?

F. Guffey

 

[Bart B.]

HopeandChange, have you ever discussed arsenal service and match brass characteristics with an engineer at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Missouri?

 

[F. Guffey]

“HopeandChange, have you ever discussed arsenal service and match brass characteristics with an engineer at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Missouri?”

Better than that, I have the cases that are stamped NM or Match, after the match ammo is fired it becomes once fired, my cases do not come with a pedigree, there was an employ of the LC Arsenal, he went by the name HertersSpecialest, I have not heard from him in the last 2 years.

And now I am guilt of name dropping.

F. Guffey

 

[F. Guffey]

and!!!!! the NM and or MATCH adds another dimension to sorting cases.

F. Guffey

 

[mwells72774]

Ps... was using lanolin for 1 case and imperial for another. Same effort needed for both. I used rcbs tc fl 308 win dies. And the press is a vintage lachmiller

 

[mehavey]

using lanolin for 1 case and imperial for another.

I had the same problem some time back -- sizing Lake City match cases one-fired in my own M1A no less.

The whole entertaining link string is here:
http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=484796&highlight=lake+city

But skip to Post#10 to get to the bottom line.
(PS: the bottom line says clean the sizing die
and switch to RCBS case Lube)

 

[NuJudge]

Probably fired in a machinegun

My experience has been that you have to use a Small Base die to return such a case to factory specs. The military frequently runs machine-guns with loose headspace to improve functioning.

 

[res45]

A couple years back somebody gave me a couple hundred pieces of LC X51 brass not having a .308 I did the next best thing to benefit me and reformed it into 300 Sav. brass.

Being it was over expanded MG brass I first deprimed the cases using the Lee Universal decapper die and removed the military crimp,then sized the base / lower portion of the case with a standard 30-06 FL resizing die and some Lee case lube I had no problems whatsoever.

Next I lubed the cases and reformed the rest of the new case with my Lyman 300 Sav. FL resizing die again went smoothly. Finally I trimmed off the excess brass with my Lyman Universe case trimmer and power adapter a finished the rest of the case prep.

I shoot these with my cast bullet loads in the old Sav. 99 and they work great and should last quiet awhile. I see no reason you couldn't do the same but instead use the .308 FL sizing die as the finish die.

Here is a good article on annealing that cover various options http://www.6mmbr.com/annealing.html I prefer the Tempil stick marker to keep a check on my heat migration. Temp is important to much heat and you ruin the brass,to little heat and you do nothing to it.

 

[Bart B.]

I see no reason you couldn't do the same but instead use the .308 FL sizing die as the finish die.

I've given a lot of M118 match fired cases to a guy who used a .300 Savage full length die to make cases for his Model 99 lever gun. Very easy considering the .300 Savage case was the foundation for the T65 cartridge that became the 7.62 NATO. Winchester decided a similar round called the .30-80 based on the military version and even made a few rifles for it. Winchester later got the ok to sell the NATO version commercially as the .308 Win.

http://riflemansjournal.blogspot.com/2011/02/history-30-80-wcf-origin-of-308.html

 

[Jimro]

Bart B.,

Appeal to authority is the weakest argument.

I'm sure a LC engineer will tell you that 7.62 brass is designed for a single use. However, the zinc content of LC brass is not outside the range of commercial brass (Lapua even released a 30% zinc brass case that produce outstanding accuracy). So whether or not an LC engineer tells you that the brass is designed for single use, a metallurgist will tell you that the brass can be annealed and reused.

Current Mk316 Mod 0 M118LR cases are made by Federal, not LC. I am pretty sure that Federal cases are reloadable. Current M118LR loads are made using LC brass. Yes they are two different loads, and yes they are both in the inventory.

Jimro

 

[Bart B.]

Jimro, I agree that any arsenal made case can be annealed and therefore be easier to reload reasonably well. But the LC engineer told me that reloading was never a concern in the brass they made cases from. Their necks were annealed for good ammo performance in horrible shipping, handling, and shooting environments. After one anneals such cases, they're no longer "original" LCAAP cases 'cause they've been modified by changing the metalurgy properties in their front half..

 

[oldpapps]

"I have to decap and size in 2 seperate steps. Have to use a generous dallop of lube and it takes way too much pressure, I have to lock my arms and stand on tip toes to get it to size."
mwells72774

I don't want to get in the middle of all of that. But, this is what I would do:

Put the brass in to be cleaned. Want to get any and all grit off and out.

Pull the de-priming pin/expander ball out of the sizing die and clean. I start with carburetor cleaner and before that evaporates away, hit it with WD40.

Brush it well. I have used a chamber brush on '06 dies. Drop the DIE into a peanut can with gasoline to cover. As I fumble with the air hose (grand kids us it to pump up bike tires and tie knots in it some how). Blow the DIE out and dry.

Measure a sample of the now fully cleaned brass. It may well have been fired in a loose chambered machingun. If it is way over size, expect to use greater force.

With the DIE set up, hand lube (nice sizing grease not spray stuff, it may work for neck sizing but). It is the body of the case that gets the grease, the neck and shoulder only a very little unless you like dimples in the shoulder. From time to time I will scrap a case mouth to put just a little lube inside. Helps the expander ball.

Hopefully the brass sizes with out "lock my arms and stand on tip toes" pressure. I do most all of my loading wile sitting down.

I hope this helps and you can get your brass sized. If not, just write it off as the babbling of some old f@r!.

Load safe,

OSOK

P.S.
Back in the early 70's, I would go with a buddy to his gradma's and watch the "Light Show' from Sibley. I don't know what Lake City was testing but I'm glade it wasn't coming my way. Good times and we didn't even know it.