Hornady 30.06 Resizing Die Comments

[haze10]

I was checking out Hornady resizing dies for 30-06. Never had any of their dies so thought I would try it. They had a deal right now where they rebate you a free box of bullets. I saw they had a carbide neck expander that does not need interior lube on the case, but its only the insert for the RCBS die. I have an RCBS die but its the X die so you can't change the spindle. So I just bought their regular die and had hopes that the 'tear drop' expander ball would have a similar effect. I got it tonight and set up a comparison. Long story short, I was disappointed. The tear drop expander would often stick on the downstroke. I wound up having to put extra lube inside the necks and then it would work okay. I changed to my Redding die, and the cases without any extra lube inside would go size with much less effort and no real sticking. I don't know how the carbide tear drop would have compared. Just thought I would share this with you.

[anachronism]

This doesn't sound right somehow. Does your sizing die have the correct size stem in it? In all of my calibers, the sizing stems expander doesn't engage the case neck until you're on the upstroke. The reason being, the expander ball is slightly smaller than nominal bullet diameter for the caliber. Since the case neck is expanded from firing, the expander won't touch the case neck until after is has been resized by the die. The expander ball on my Hornady New Dimension dies is .306, .002 under nominal bullet diameter.

[haze10]

Yes, you are correct, I wasn't sure whether downstroke meant the cartridge traveling down or the handle down. In any case, its as you say. Cartridge goes into die okay, but as cartridge is being pulled out of die, the expander gets stuck a lot. With the same run of brass, switching between the hornady and the redding, the redding worked the brass easier. That was my only point. I had hoped that the hornady expander was going to be carbide but its steel. Then I could have not lubed the neck inside.

Has anyone tried the hornady carbide insert for the RCBS die?

[John Dunn]

I haven't tried the Hornady carbide expander, but if your goal is to keep the expander ball from sticking so much there are a couple of things that can help.

Case neck turning will slightly decrease the pressure on the expander as the resizing die is squeezing less material down in the neck.

Use of a neck bushing die selected for the appropriate bushing helps a great deal, you can even ditch the expnder with these provided the case mouth isn't out of round or dented.

Finally, you can chuck up the expander (I've done this with steel, haven't tried it with carbide) in a drill and polish it with fine sandpaperand or lapping compound, etc. This works best if you are getting your case neck tension from the sizing die. Go easy on this one as overpolishing will lead to increased neck tension.

[anachronism]

The Hornady expander is indeed steel. You might check your expander ball for any roughness in finish, but I don't believe you'll find any. As with the RCBS, you can order a carbide expander stem assy, and not worry about lubing the case necks. I just lube my cases in a large ziplock bag using Dillon case lube. Some cases necks will be facing up and will get a little case lube sprayed into them as I spray 2 pumps into the bag. I then seal the bag and rattle the cases around for a few seconds before sizing. This has been all the neck lubing I've ever needed. The few cases that get lube in them seem to carry enough lube for the whole batch. I have a .223 addiction, so believe me, I load a LOT of bottle neck rifle cases. I believe you may just have a case neck lube problem, your RCBS dies have a different expander design, so the behave differently in that one aspect. I have tried carbide expanders in the past, and I probably should have one for .223, but I'm content with my progress so far, so I probably won't buy another one, simply because my system works well for me.