Weird marks on Lapua brass from Redding die

Devlin

Devlin

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Hey Guys,

Haven't run into this myself before, re-sizing some once fired Lapua 6.5 Creedmoor small rifle primer brass through a Redding full length sizing die. It's Redding Premium die that I recently got and used for a little while without problems. I was using it tonight and the brass was very difficult to go in despite being lubed as I normally do as well as fresh and clean lube inside the die as per usual.

I'm using a Forster Co-Ax press and had to pull and push pretty hard to get the brass out of the die, I did two rounds and both had the same experience. Took the die apart cleaned it with brake cleaner completely inside and out, ran a q-tip around the inside of the die to check for any rough spots and found nothing. Re-lubed it, re-assembled and tried again one more round and got the same result sticking and weird marks as pictured below.

I'm thinking I'm just gonna toss the die and grab another one as I ran some 308 brass through with the same routine of cleaning and lubing with no issues. I should also note I tried two types of lube, what I usually use a mix of liquid lanolin and alcohol as well as some Lyman spray on quick lube, same experience with both of those on the 6.5 Creedmoor Redding die. The 308 die was also a Redding and no issues there.

Welcome any advice/input

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Measure how much the die is sizing the brass. Looks like a lot. Maybe the die or the chamber is oversize? Lotsa lube and go.
 
Questions

is this Brass fired in your rifle ?

Is this the first brass you have resized with this rifle / sizing dies

I think this brass looks this way because the chamber the brass was fired from is rough
 
The patterns look identical on both pieces. Did it look like that before it went into the sizing die? I'm going to assume a 'no' to that but I just want to get that out of the way.

Are you warming up the lanolin/alcohol mix to be sure that the lanolin is fully dissolved? I use it all the time for full length resizing and mine tends to gel up a little and separate into a white cloudy layer on the bottom of the plastic bottle I keep it in after sitting around for a week or two. Not telling you what to do, but I warm mine up in the nuke for 15 seconds or so and then shake it up well. The lanolin goes completely back into solution. I wouldn't suggest getting it hot enough to evaporate the alcohol in the nuke. It might not be very safe to do so. You could also heat up the sealed bottle in a bowl of hot water.

If this die worked properly before and the lube isn't the issue, then there must be a problem with the die. You could try to polish it up with a suitably sized bore mop (.410 should work) mounted in a hand held drill with some Mothers polishing compound. Clean the die thoroughly with brake cleaner after polishing before trying it out again.
 
I agree with rick357 and polish the die as he stated above. How did you clean your cases, vibratory tumbler with walnut media, wet tumbling?

I have seen this before with overly clean wet tumbled cases and also from a vibratory tumbler when the polishing compound got inside the die.

Just polish the die before blaming the die, its heat treated and very hard so my guess is the die is increasing the friction. And if it's polished and squeaky clean the problem should go away.
 
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Polish the die. I have the same premium die set in 308. Its nice having the carbide ball for the neck. But looking inside the full length die it isn't that well polished. I ended up using my old 70's RCBS die instead. Or my Lee.

If i had to buy again i would just buy the seating die only.
 
This is inadequate lube. I've created those exact same marks with several different dies and cases and the common denominator is lube failure.
The contributing factors can be all the things mentioned above such as brass fired in a rough and/or oversized chamber etc etc. But the major clue is it took a lot of force to extract the brass from the die.... this is a give away.

Redding makes great dies and the chances of getting a bad die that is very small. If the die was so bad to cause this problem it would have a visible defect.

Interestingly I've had problems with Lyman spray lube recently. My latest can gave me this same situation with known good cases in a known good die. I just sprayed the cases quickly and ran them into the die without waiting for the aromatic solvent to evaporate. I also didn't shake the can. I switched to Imperial sizing wax that I've had for years and the problem went away.

This has also happened to me with home made lube esp alcohol based were my porportion of lanolin to alcohol was too low.
 
I had the same situation happen using a spray lube. I switched to using a beeswax type lube which solved the issue. Trick is not to over lube the case.
 
Yup same here. Spray lube did not cut it. Calls Forster for advice and they sent me a bottle of their
High pressure lube and sizing can’t get any easier. And the weird stress marks have never returned.
 
Try a different lube first. Any spray lube has a "carrier" that evaporates after contact with the brass, so you may have an incomplete coating.
Cheap and nasty Lee paste lube has worked well for me. It's easy to get an even film by applying it with your fingertips.
I occasionally see a slight bit of the same problem you have with my RCBS dies, but not to that extent.
 
My dies used to do that to my Lapua brass

I took a brass cleaning brush and inserted in cordless drill chuck,
Spinning a cotton patch around it,
Put some autosol on the cotton patch,
Insert inside the empty die and let her spin a bit.

Since then my brass casing require less lube, glide really easy, no markings at all.
My older casings are 10F and always went well.
Use with caution as this isn’t in any manual
 
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I have even taken the die apart and put the die body in my vibratory tumbler overnight with treated walnut media. It came out looking better than new, just remember to remove any polishing compound still inside the die. I had a 30-06 die I had not used in over 20 years with light surface rust on it and the vibratory tumbler removed the rust.

I think a snug fitting cleaning mop on a drill and J&B Bore Paste works best for embedded dirt and grit inside the die. You can also use automotive rubbing or polishing compound, Mothers Mag and Wheel polish, Flitz, etc.
 
just having some fun said:
Questions

is this Brass fired in your rifle ?

Is this the first brass you have resized with this rifle / sizing dies

I think this brass looks this way because the chamber the brass was fired from is rough
Click to expand...

PGW Steve said:
This. You're seeing the die 'smoothing out' the high spots on the case formed by a rough chamber.
Click to expand...

It would be worth carefully inspecting the rifle's chamber and once fired cases.
 
tiriaq said:
It would be worth carefully inspecting the rifle's chamber and once fired cases.
Click to expand...


Yes the brass was fired from my rifle, this was the first re-size with this brass. I don't think it's a rough chamber issue the rifle was built by a high quality smith at Insite Arms, will scope it anyway to see if there is some abnormality.
 
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