Brass prep

[Tim N]

Hi All,
Might be a good chance to lay out the procedure for any novice brass preppers.
Buy quality brass.
Weight sort brass.
Chamber neck minus 3 thou minus bullet dia - left over divided by 2 - that’s the target neck wall thickness.
I size brass then use an internal neck mandrel to expand for the neck turning tool.
Trim to suit with a drop of cutting fluid.(more detail here)
I do mine in one pass with a K&M with a big handle using a chord less screw gun.
Wash cases in shellite.
I also use an internal primer bevel
Clean up primer pockets
Fire cases, trim to length, bevel inside and outside of necks.
You can probably sense the air of excitement building for me anticipating my next 500 cases
If you had the joy of turning 500 cases what would you do?

[bully_eye]

If I had to neck turn 500 cases? I’d re-chamber to a ‘no-turn’ spec chamber.

Michael

[Weairy]

I'm sure this topic will get some mixed opinions!

New brass? Pull it out of the box, load it .1 up from F/F load, shoot it.
Currently trialling new ways to do F/F brass, so interested to hear who does what.

[Rich4]

Buy a lathe! Sorry the devil made me say it, I have a twisted thing where I want to do nothing but end up doing everything just in case, true pockets flash holes chamfer turn etc etc
In all honesty though I’d not turn without a lathe, my favourite combination is lee collet ND with Forster comp seater Fl as necessary, or all the time for some

[Tim N]

Buy a lathe! Sorry the devil made me say it, I have a twisted thing where I want to do nothing but end up doing everything just in case, true pockets flash holes chamfer turn etc etc
In all honesty though I’d not turn without a lathe, my favourite combination is lee collet ND with Forster comp seater Fl as necessary, or all the time for some

I have been given a lathe, how do you use it??

[Accuracy]

There's good information on brass prep on the Bankstown Chatswood RC site.
http://bankstown-chatswood.org.au/case_prep.html

[Rich4]

Too easy, I have an old lee press ram turned down to fit a drill chuck in tail stock which is used to install and remove cases from a custom mandrel turned each time to ensure concentricity, I like a nice finish and a bit of stretch, grind a hss tool to the shoulder angle with a nice radius, level bed etc prior use auto feed and touch the shoulder remove case with shellholder in tailstock, very simple fast and accurate did I mention easy, tool must be honed sharp for a nice finish

[Tim L]

New brass
Run it up the lee collet die mandrel to ensure it's round.
Load it and shoot it.

Once fired.
Brush the neck
Neck resize (lee collet die)
Clean pocket
Chamfer neck (K&M)
Chamfer inside of flash hole
Tumble
Anneal
Weight sort
Reload

[ShaneG]

Anneal before resizing

[Tim L]

Anneal before resizing

I used to but it meant 2 passes through the die.
I realised that before I had the AMP I woulld only anneal every 3 firings and still had great results. So I changed from popping primers, cleaning, annealing and neck sizing to popping primers and neck sizing in one, then cleaning and annealing.

[willow]

Well one thing I don't do with brass is weight sort it and neck turn - if there's a difference in doing so I doubt I'm good enough to shoot the difference with everything else being equal. Otherwise I ultrasonic clean, FLS and anneal after every firing, regularly check OAL to see if it needs trimming, if so then I'll also chamfer the inside and outside of the case neck. Load it and shoot...

[Ratgun]

Any chance of a video using the lathe method

[Tim N]

Anneal before resizing

I used to but it meant 2 passes through the die.
I realised that before I had the AMP I woulld only anneal every 3 firings and still had great results. So I changed from popping primers, cleaning, annealing and neck sizing to popping primers and neck sizing in one, then cleaning and annealing.

I anneal first then process the cases
As far as popping primers go I thought the FTR crew did that during the firing of cases

[Rich4]

Any chance of a video using the lathe method

If I was at all computer literate I’d happily do that, I’ll talk to Sellsy he seems to be able to post videos and I have a batch to do, won’t be any time soon though, we’re both drowning in work at the moment

[GSells]

I hate case prep and reloading . I would love a bullet Fairy!! Every time I opened up my ammo box , it magically refills with perfectly weight sorted , primer chamfered, neck turned , annealed , powder to the kernal , 180 hybrid to the 3 thou , harmonically tuned 60.10 ammo !