450Bushmaster.net

Hey guys wonder if anyone has ever seen this and what might have been the original cause? Was loading up some 225 FTXs this week and about 10 or so cases in suddenly noticed scratches all over the sides of the finished cases (See Picture). Pull the dies and looking inside them I found the sizing die had what looked like very thin vertical tracks of brass all around the circumference of the die matching up to the case scratches. After trying various cleaning compounds it ended up taking quite a bit of work with a bronze brush loaded with JB compound to remove these streaks of brass.

These are about 2year old Hornady dies that I have loaded over 1000 rounds of 450Bm through. Been reloading for over 30 years and have never seen anything like this. Anyone have any thoughts what might have caused the brass transfer to the dies in the first place? Cases are always cleaned and tumbled before reloading. ls this something I am doing wrong? Anyone have any thoughts on how this happened?

Two things to contribute. I have well over 2k rounds resized through my Hornady dies and have never experienced that. I do tumble my spent cases to remove the grunge and I lube every case with Imperial Sizing Wax before resizing. 2-3X more slippery than Hornady One Shot, though more work to apply. You get back what you invest. I've seen scratches like that from the feedlips on magazines that haven't been polished and the occasional bites from the barrel extension sharp edges but never from the resizing die. I also clean out my dies from time to time on general principle. No hard schedule. Just when I think of it.



Hoot

Thanks for the thoughts Hoot. I always ultrasonic clean and then tumble to polish before reloading. I switched to spraying my rifle cases down with the RCBS Case Slick several years back. I looked through another batch I reloaded a few weeks ago and see the same marks on those cases so this has been going on for a bit. I have only been rotating a batch of 200 for a while so not sure when this started as I do not see it on any other cases besides a batch of 50 I loaded a while back and these most recent ones and a few other unloaded cases in the lot of 200. I just upgraded lighting in the shop and probably would not have noticed these with the aging eyes without the improved lighting.

The more I think about it, I kind of follow your thought pattern that maybe a few cases did not get lubed good and caused the brass transfer some time back. I have always thought one of the hazards with the sprays is that you do not handle each case as you do with the waxing so you have to depend on getting an even coat by rolling the cases during spray. Basically it does not really seemed to have harmed anything as the scratches are really just surface and I doubt will cause any real issues. At least the dies do not look damaged and they have a nice polish now from the JB!

Just sharing my experience with very similar scratches on my 450 cases. I didn’t see them until after I fired. I found that the BCG was scratching the brass from too much magazine spring pressure. I have custom cut spring and blocked mags for hunting and this only occurred when using those particular magazines. All others are fine. Once I adjusted spring pressure (cutting down limiter) this was resolved.

This does not appear to be your issues but thought others may want to know that there may be other causes and solutions.

Huukt in FL.