Thread: Bry Lubricating necks when seating

Repeated firing of cases causes case necks and shoulders to become more brittle and reduces uniformity within the batch that impacts accuracy. Newer brass being better than older brass if not annealed. Like most here I try to increase case life and uniformity of my cases by annealing (gas top) necks and shoulders. However annealing burns any residual lube present in the case neck and increases the resistance when seating a projectile. The resistance varies between cases. I have been using a bit of graphite powder on the projectile shanks or inside the necks to reduce seating friction and hopefully improve accuracy.

What's the general consensus on lubing case mouths or projectiles when seating and its impact on accuracy? Is it worthwhile or a time waste?

Dunno if it has a huge impact but I wet tumble my rifle brass every use and that tends to clean out any form of residue really well.
I graphite my necks after priming. I take note of the seating and if anything feels off I try to find out why.

It certainly cant hurt.

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Lube the necks

It allows less stiction so you can get the ZCL length the same on each loaded round

It can also prevent galvanic corrosion between the two dissimilar metals, this can cause pressure/velocity increases in ammo that has been stored for months/years

It can be a big factor in lowering ES, particularly graphite/ HBN powder

It can prevent scratching your projectile when seating into the case mouth, softer J4 jackets and varmint style projectiles suffer the most with non lubed assembly, if the assembly process is dry enough and you don’t have a VLD inside neck chamfer you can actually make a compression ring on the ogive of your projectile with the seating force required. An amax type seating stem can fix this but you are better to VLD chamfer and lube the necks after reducing neck tension to between 2-4 thou

It’s also a factor in waterproofing your ammo

I use a tiny amount of case wax to get the expander in and out of the necks. Then with Lapua brass in 6.5x47L and 308 I've started dipping in dry neck lube which sticks to the wax residue. Definitely gives super smooth and consistent seating and I figure that the dry lube sticking to the wax prevents the wax from contaminating powder.

I always ultrasonic then walnut tumble. But I've just started giving the necks a bloody good brush as well, that has seemed to make a big difference with the seating consistency. Last batch of 50 I did were all a constant tension when seating where as before I'd get a couple of stiffer ones to seat. Will see how the SDs look.

After cleaning and annealing every firing and resizing with a bushing die I give two in-out strokes with a stiff nylon brush of a larger calibre. Then dip and twirl the necks a couple of times in the little 'Redding Dry Neck Lube' jar (the one that has the minute graphite coated balls) and then wipe off the outside of the neck shoulder with a clean dry cloth. Have to occasionally add a little micro graphite powder to jar and give it a good shake. Works well.

We did a study with Lou Murdica (based in the US) with our annealer and noticed during his reloading procedure he used a product called "Molykote" (https://www.ellsworth.com/products/b...-283-g-bottle/ To be precise)

He finds a drastic reduction in seating force when using this substance.
You can see him use it in this video:
https://youtu.be/JHQrfuVOCA8

We will be exploring this along with different lube/neck treatments when we get our new automated/load cell bullet seater fully running.

Thanks for the input, it seems i'm not the only one playing in this area. The graphite lube certainly reduces the friction when seating and produces a more consistent resistance. It will be interesting to see if I can get it to translate to accuracy.
Without a fixed rest / cradle to take our shooter error and reduce the number of rounds in the sample size to show a result, measuring SE is probably the best surrogate of improved consistency in the batch?

It appears Molykote is still just molybdemum disulfide?
Used to be a fan as a projectile coating but wouldnt ever let that stuff near one of my rifles again.

HBN would probably work just as well and is safer to use in both black and stainless barrels.
Water near either of them is an issue.

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I have never tried graphite, HBN or anything else in my necks but I’m sure it works. Like anything else in reloading, consistently is key. Find what works and keep doing it.

I don’t even bother to brush or clean my necks as I believe the powder residue works as a lubricant. I outside neck turn new cases and neck size with bushing dies, which typically gives me .5 or close MOA and single figure ES.

Perhaps I could improve my groups with graphite? Might give it a try.

I ultrasonic cleaner and aneal. The ultrasonic leaves them very clean with my brew. Actually too clean. Like has been said, dirty case necks even after a brush out act as a bit of neck lube. The graphite in the neck is the go otherwise. Smooth consistent seating. Good accuracy but we all know that doesn't come from just one thing.
I just wipe it around with an ear bud.
Because my cases are so clean, it effects the other end of the case too. I wipe a little in the primer pocket. This works well too, no miss fires or anything silly, easy consistent seating.

I scrub my inside necks with bronze or nylon brush dipowd in graphite powder before resizing. Seems ok but I dont anneal.

On wet tumbling, i prefer to do that straight after depriming. Less chance of the pins getting stuck later

I leave the trace amount of mica dust in the necks after mandrel die expanding. That gives me a consistant seating feel. I dont reckon its a good idea to be liberally coating inside necks with a q-tip. That could put a variable amount of lube down the barrel which would be difficult to control no? Over 40shots, is mv now faster towards the end? How healthy is mica down the bore anyway?

I outside turned this batch before last firing. No annealing. It was all medium effort mandrel expanding but the seating effort all felt mild / same. No tight or loose seatings.

Re: Graphite lube for case necks:
Graphite absorbs moisture, so I would expect graphite to cause corrosion in the bore. Probably it is not easy to clean graphite out of the pores of metal?