Wednesday, October 03, 2007

A bit more on the Lee Hand Press and case lube

In comments on this post it was asked if the Hand Press actually had enough leverage to full-length resize bottleneck rifle cases. On the stuff I did with it, it did. At that time the only rifle stuff I had/reloaded was .303 and .30-30. The latter was definitely easier, but it did indeed run the .303 full-length into the RCBS sizing die. Took a real push and pull to run it in and pull it out, but it did it. Heavier or longer cases, neck-sizing would definitely be the way to go with it, though. Something like .30-06 would be a pain.

On case lube in this post Guy mentioned dissolving Lee lube in alcohol and using a spray bottle to lube cases. Honest, I'd wondered about this once, but with water instead of alcohol and- critical thing- I never got around to trying it. He did. So while grocery shopping yesterday I got a small spray bottle and once home poured some rubbing alcohol in, then squeezed in a dollop of lube and shook hell out of it. Then set up some .30-06 cases in a row and hit them with one spritz on each side and left them alone for a while. Damn, that works! Very light coat of lube left behind, just about perfect. And if you angle the spray down a touch, it'll get some inside the case necks to ease the passage of the expander button. I will be using this in the future.

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