Is my die screwed?

[LUTNIT]

Not really trusting what it is, your friend did not really return it to you in its original state... ergo he should buy you new dies...??? You can do this, that, or t'other, run them back to RCBS, etc.... simple solution - get buddy to buy you a new set of dies.

Yeah, that's what I'm doing and he actually offered before I even asked.

 

[DFarmer]

I was having the same problem but not as bad with new Lapua brass and RCBS dies. I took a piece of green 3M pad, stuffed it into the die and grabbed the other end with a drill. After a few seconds I stuffed a rag in to the die to make sure it was clean and that restored it to new.

I bought a used set of 22.250 dies a couple of months ago and just got some brass to try them out. The first piece of brass was very difficult to resize - actually we didn't succeed in completing the stroke. We removed the brass and a half inch from the shoulder on the case wall the die was scraping brass down the shell. We looked inside the die and there is a definite line that you can feel with a pin. My son tried this 3M method to no avail. Time for a new die.