Fire Forming Cases

[Hogdaddy]

I'm having a heck of a time loading .308!
Haven't had any problems loading .45 and 6.8 but this caliber is blowing my mind.
Here's my problem. I've got all the SAAMI spec data for the .308 Win but this Remington 700P just doesn't seem to be in spec.
If I put factory, never been fired ammo in the rifle and fire it, wouldn't that fire form the brass to the size of the chamber? I used four different manufacturers and came up pretty consistently at 1.619 fire formed. Should I just take .003 off that size and load em up at 1.613? (I tried that but can't seem to get my Lee dies to cooperate.)

Comments please...

 

[TXCOONDOG]

Yes, it should be fire formed.

Once my brass is fire formed to the chamber , I anneal the brass, only size the neck (I use a Hornady neck sizing die), trim case (if needed) and check it via my rifle (700 SPS .308).

Make up some dummy rounds, get the process, etc down before loading live rounds.

Around 5 or so firings, you may need to full resize.

Some guys like to full resize all their brass to prevent them from having trouble chambering (because of tight fit) and they also use the same load in multiple rifles.

 

[Hogdaddy]

Good, thanks, at least I know I'm on the right track.

 

[Hogdaddy]

How do you anneal the cases?

 

[TXCOONDOG]

Brass can get hard and brittle from firing several times, sizing, etc so you heat the brass from the neck to approxamately 1/4" passed the shoulder to soften it.

They have machines for the process. However, I use a propane torch,and a socket (holds brass and spins it) attached to a drill. I hold the neck of the brass over the flame (slowly spinning in the socket) for 4-6 second (until pink, not red hot or it can ruin it) and drop it in water to stop the process.

I'm not real good about explaining things in writing so here's a video (lots of youtube videos on this subject) :

 

[BigRedDog]

http://www.giraudtool.com/annealer1.htm

best way to go

 

[TXCOONDOG]

I would also recommend that you upgrade your bolt knob which will help with a postive lift, feed and ejection.

I use and recommend the KRG Bolt Knob which only takes a minute to install:

 

[Itsazonik]

I was loading for my friends 308 a while back and the first time we reloaded his factory ammo everything was fine but the second time we ran I to the same problem. He had a hand full of cases that would stick and we couldn't figure out why. Cases wouldn't chamber even when trimmed to proper length. I ended up trimming the back slightly after full length sizing and it worked. We annealed the cases after that and haven't had much problem. Later on when he bought once fired brass we ran into problems with lake city brass but we just full length sized those and everything worked great after that.

 

[TXCOONDOG]

Because the LC brass has been fired from autos with oversized chambers, has thicker walls than other brass, and will bounce back .001, I sometimes have to full length resize twice the first time.

 

[Itsazonik]

We always run them all once, clean them then run them again