Posted: 3/5/2015 7:19:06 PM EDT
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Well I got tired of trying to trim them by hand (.223) so I took the cutter out of the wood ball and chucked it up in my Dealt CORDED (hate cordless) drill. Spun at full speed, didn't notice any wobble. Cool, GTG right? wrong. I screwed the pin in, dropped a case over the pin, spin away at moderate speed, then deburr and measure with digital caliper and got like 1.7155 Uhhh. ok, so. grabbed the caliper again, unscrewed it approx .04. Did another case and it measured at 1.7555. Which is what I was shooting for. Cool. But from that point on they hardly ever measured the exact same. Which being such a simple tool, you would expect it to be very consistent. They measured from 1.748-1.757, so a 0.008 deviation, most were about half that. I don't know if this is considerable or acceptable as I just started loading, but I don't like it. I also noticed they mouths are not always perfectly square. It wasn't until I sped things up that I noticed the tool causing the case to wobble. The cutter isn't doing it, it's the pin. It's warped where they stamped the side of it .223. I wish I knew someone with a lathe to try to turn the end part of the shaft to true it up. As this speeds up the process a hell of a lot.
P.S. It's all LC brass. I am using the ones that I spotted right off the bat as "plinking" cases. As they are staked vs normal crimp and of scattered years from 2012-14. Which I still find odd, since most all the LC brass I have in this year range is not staked. I was wondering if MAYBE there is a change of the web not being the exact same thickness from one year to another? Or something like that? I started weighing some as well on my charge masters scale, was was surprised how far off some where from others, some as far as 3gr. And for the record, I'm not using a bolt gun or an AR with a $$$ match barrel or anything. But I'm doing as much as I can, partly as a learning experience since this is my first time loading. Also to see what is a bit overkill for plinking ammo. And how much of a difference in MY rifle say mixed brass with just "in spec" cases and tossing in some of the same bullets from the same lot. With the same powder charge VS Exact same case length, exact same case weight, exact same bullet weight etc. Trying to learn as much as I can, as i did buy a little box of 50, 77gr SMK the other day and 3lb of Reload 15. (got 1000 .55gr fmj w/c Hornady) But I got 2lb of Accurate 2015 for those. |
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As far as the deviations go (.008), I wouldn't sweat it.
As you get more practice with the trimmer, I bet you figure out it's little tricks and get that deviation down quite a bit. As far as the case weights go, you can of course sort by weight. I doubt you'll gain much, for plinking ammo that is. For my carbine (plinking) loads, function & reliability is really what I'm after. I bump the shoulders back .005-.006... I want those running smoothly in a hot/dirty chamber All that said, there's nothing wrong with going about it carefully and precisely. Welcome to OCD 
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| Well changed up the way I was using the drill, and dropped the deviation some. 1.752-1.756. That's acceptable for plinking to me. When I get one coming out at 1.755 I set it to the side as "match" to be sorted by weight. So once I develop a load, I can break it out and see if I can improve shot groups at all. |
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Quoted: so I took the cutter out of the wood ball and chucked it up in my Dealt CORDED (hate cordless) drill. ... I screwed the pin in, dropped a case over the pin, spin away at moderate speed... You're supposed to chuck the shell plate lock stud into the drill, NOT the cutter! |
