An observation/question on case lube and headspace

S

steve154

New member
I recently invested in a Hornady headspace gauge kit and a set of good calipers. I have been messing with some .308 cases for the past few days and have noticed that it really makes a difference on how well the cases are lubed. I use Hornday spray lube. On the cases that go in a little hard and come out a little hard, the headspace is considerably longer than the cases that go in easy, with plenty of lube. Many of them were 3-4/1000 longer than what they should have been, which was is longer than before they went in the die.

Are the cases stretching when getting pulled out of the die? I never thought there would be that much of a difference.
 
Originally Posted By: steve154I recently invested in a Hornady headspace gauge kit and a set of good calipers. I have been messing with some .308 cases for the past few days and have noticed that it really makes a difference on how well the cases are lubed. I use Hornday spray lube. On the cases that go in a little hard and come out a little hard, the headspace is considerably longer than the cases that go in easy, with plenty of lube. Many of them were 3-4/1000 longer than what they should have been, which was is longer than before they went in the die.

Are the cases stretching when getting pulled out of the die? I never thought there would be that much of a difference.

They are not being stretched - when the body of a case is squeezed in a FL die, the diameter gets smaller - the brass has to somewhere - so some of goes into making the walls thicker, but some of it moves forwards and makes the tube longer. Makes no difference whether you have an expander ball in it or not.


.
 
Originally Posted By: steve154 On the cases that go in a little hard and come out a little hard, the headspace is considerably longer than the cases that go in easy, with plenty of lube.

I think I would use more lube, or a different lube, before I stuck a case!
CS told you right about your brass "stretching". It's gotta go somewhere, and it just goes to the path of least (or no) resistance...the neck of the die.
 
Back
Top