2 main points from me.
1. Yes that is normal. Most people believe the brass instantly becomes a match to the chamber as soon as its fired. In my experience this couldn't be farther from the truth. That is why neck sizing lets you get away with it a few times before.... you have to FL size again due to case growth. But why wasn't the case tight in the chamber after the first firing? Because brass does not fully fire form on initial and often subsequent firings. In low pressure rounds, such as light .30-30 loads, you may not see any appreciable case growth aside from neck expansion. I've tested the same 2 pieces of brass fired 5x back to back, reloading them on a Lee hand press by neck sizing and dumping a starting load Lee dipper of IMR4895 under a 150 gr bullet. The shoulder position never changed despite only sizing half the neck between firings. For complete fire forming it may take several firings to get there at full pressure.
2. Setting back shoulders.
This is another area where conventional forum wisdom doesn't jive with my experiences. I learned like several others here that simply backing out your die can lead to big variances in shoulder setback. I thought I had my 223 FL die exactly where I wanted it. Did a handful of test cases, all 5 thou of bump. Cool. Banged off 100 cases and out of curiosity started pulling random ones out to measure. Some had 0 setback. This means the case was sized and the shoulder was pushed back but stopped 5 thou short of my first handful of test cases. (Case length including shoulder position grows as the diameter is reduced in the die, until the shoulder is actually pushed back near the last 10 thou or so of ram movement.) This was very concerning since I had used very consistent pressure on the press handle. Different cases can have more resistance and the flex in the press happily eats the difference. The solution? Redding competition shellholder sets. They have the deck heights reduced from 2 to ten thou in 2 thou increments. They are set up for full cam over to ensure they make hard contact with the die and maintain a consistent dimension between deck height and die. The hardened tool steel does not allow for 5 thou of variance. I see the odd case at 1 to 1.5 thou max with probably 90% or more being less than my tools can measure accurately. They aren't cheap but they do their job. High quality match brass will see less variance over all and paired with comp shellholders I can control setback very accurately.
1. Yes that is normal. Most people believe the brass instantly becomes a match to the chamber as soon as its fired. In my experience this couldn't be farther from the truth. That is why neck sizing lets you get away with it a few times before.... you have to FL size again due to case growth. But why wasn't the case tight in the chamber after the first firing? Because brass does not fully fire form on initial and often subsequent firings. In low pressure rounds, such as light .30-30 loads, you may not see any appreciable case growth aside from neck expansion. I've tested the same 2 pieces of brass fired 5x back to back, reloading them on a Lee hand press by neck sizing and dumping a starting load Lee dipper of IMR4895 under a 150 gr bullet. The shoulder position never changed despite only sizing half the neck between firings. For complete fire forming it may take several firings to get there at full pressure.
2. Setting back shoulders.
This is another area where conventional forum wisdom doesn't jive with my experiences. I learned like several others here that simply backing out your die can lead to big variances in shoulder setback. I thought I had my 223 FL die exactly where I wanted it. Did a handful of test cases, all 5 thou of bump. Cool. Banged off 100 cases and out of curiosity started pulling random ones out to measure. Some had 0 setback. This means the case was sized and the shoulder was pushed back but stopped 5 thou short of my first handful of test cases. (Case length including shoulder position grows as the diameter is reduced in the die, until the shoulder is actually pushed back near the last 10 thou or so of ram movement.) This was very concerning since I had used very consistent pressure on the press handle. Different cases can have more resistance and the flex in the press happily eats the difference. The solution? Redding competition shellholder sets. They have the deck heights reduced from 2 to ten thou in 2 thou increments. They are set up for full cam over to ensure they make hard contact with the die and maintain a consistent dimension between deck height and die. The hardened tool steel does not allow for 5 thou of variance. I see the odd case at 1 to 1.5 thou max with probably 90% or more being less than my tools can measure accurately. They aren't cheap but they do their job. High quality match brass will see less variance over all and paired with comp shellholders I can control setback very accurately.
