making 300 Whisper brass from .223 question

[Mike-Sid]

I'm making 300 Whisper brass from .223 brass, and having a few "problems".
here is what I am doing:

1) Trim the .223 brass on a drill press with a jig I made up. I trim them close to the final length.

2) run the brass through a Whisper FL sizing die.

3) do the final trim with my Giraud case trimmer.

Now the problem. If I FL resize with the expander ball in, the sholder does not form fully. If I resize without the expander in, the shoulder forms correctly, but neck not expanded enough to seat bullet.

Do I have to run it through without the expander, then with the expander to form the brass correctly?
What am I doing wrong?

[HUNTER2]

Sounds like you are pulling the shoulder back when the expander ball is removed...Is it hard to remove the ball on the upstroke? Are you lubing it any? Try putting some lube on the inside of the neck.. Are you using recycled brass ( shot more than once, extra hard ), new brass? I have used some remanufactured brass that was so hard it had to be annealed before resizing.. If they are tooo soft with really thick necks they will do the same thing...

[pug]

For the once fired mil brass I run them all through without the expander to fully form the shoulder. This gives a .303 to .304 inside neck but since I shoot boat tails I just let the bullet expand the neck. After they are fire formed I then consider them 300/221 brass and I usually have the expander back on for the second run. Early on I bought two different batches of processed brass made from LC and FC cases and both batches had the smaller id necks so I am pretty sure the volume producers are sizing without the expander. You are not really doing anything wrong.

[Mike-Sid]

Pug, I agree with you! Thanks for the help. I never had this problem before, but then I was running the brass through the size die with the 27 cal expander in, then trim the brass.

Thanks

[Malaga]

Mike.. you are on the right track... speed it up a little I need some brass :)

[Mike-Sid]

Settle down Malaga! Play with your new Trident 9 and mind your own business!

I decided if I cut then resize, the case neck does not form straight. The case mouth has a pronounced bell.
I went back to resizing with out an expander then trimming. The case forms well, except the inside neck diameter is about .290.

This must be the way to go? I guess the 1st loading will be with boat tails.


Am I doing things correctly?

Thanks for the input

[pug]

I just ran through a small batch because I didn't want to rely on my memory. First I am using Redding dies. Remove the expander and stem from the FL die. Insert a 223 untrimmed case in the shell holder and size. This gives you a three step case. Put it in jig and trim to length and debur. This case is now ready for me to prime and load. These particular LC 8x stamped cases are running .300 - .301 inside diameter. I will have to see what the loaded OD measures before trying to chamber one because some of my barrels are chambered in 300/221 which is a little tighter than 300 Fireball. Since the inside diameter of the die never changes, varying inside neck diameter means your cases have thicker brass in the side walls (which become the neck). If this setup is the same as yours and you are getting .290 inside neck diameter I would definitely make a dummy round up and measure the loaded outside neck diameter. If it is more than .334 I would check things out further before loading them up.

[Mike-Sid]

Pug,
I'll try a few different makes of cases and take some more acurate measurements, and make a few dummy rounds. Thanks for the advice, it all makes sense to me.

Mike

[Mike-Sid]

Looks like the "scrap" brass I was using to adjust my equiptment is thicker than my "normal" brass. The brass is some berdan primed stuff.
My comercial brass comes out to approx .295 which will work, and about the same for my military brass.
Well looks like it is time to give some a try.

[Mike-Sid]

All of my problems came from useing berdan primed military brass to set up my trimmers. This brass was thicker and even though I was able to set up my machines, the formed brass had issues.
Today I loaded up some formed military and comercial brass with 180 gr boattails. No problems! Will go to the range tomorrow.