resizing brass

[tooldummy]

I had loaded some .308's a while back and was going to load some more this evening. They chambered pretty tight, so I bought an RCBS precision michrometer that measures the case shoulder and also the bullet ogive. I compared them to a new Federal cartridge, a Federal I had shot (factory load) and one of my resized bulk brass I had bought, supposedly once fired. The new Federal shoulder is .003 shorter than my resized brass, and a piece of Federal factory once fired is about .0015 shorter. So obviously my resized needs shortened a little more. I am using Hornady dies, and set them 1/4 turn past touching, which locks the handle on my Rockchucker over center nicely. I can chamber them in my CZ, but they are pretty tight. What do you guys recommend?

[Jack]

Check your case lubing procedure, particularly inside the case neck.
If you don't adequately lube inside the case neck, the expander ball drags as you withdraw the case from the die.... sometimes pulling the neck and shoulder forward. Kind of negates the sizing you just did pushing the case into the die.
If that's not the problem, and you have the die screwed down as you describe, maybe the die is a bit large- that's rare, but not impossible. If that's the problem, a call to Hornady's customer service is in order.

[tooldummy]

Thank you Jack. You may very well be right about the expander ball. I had suspected that, and completely removed the ball and primer punch from the die. I just can not get the brass any smaller. I will call them Monday, unless someone else has an idea, and see what they say.
Someone else on another forum thought RCBS made a die for brass maybe shot from a machine gun. I had asked about the brass being hard to resize a while back, and someone told me that this is probably what this brass was. Maybe I need to look into that also. But, I would think that even if it was it should resize another .0015. It would about have to be a die problem I would think. thanks for your help.

[Cal Sibley]

This is a fairly common problem with the dreaded expander ball. Some years ago I switched to Wilson NS knockout dies which have no expander ball. It makes life a lot simpler. Best wishes.

Cal - Montreal