Well, I got my Dillon swage and my Giraud trimmer. I proceeded to tackle the heap of brass that I had previously cleaned, deprimed, and resized.
Interestingly, I learned to run the swage pretty fast. I could do about 14 cases per minute. You have to have total continuity and economy of motion and use both hands. Very nice.
The Giraud leaves the cases looking pretty awesome, but that's about as far as I have gotten.
Where I am hitting a wall is that I cannot get my cases trimmed to consistent lengths. I am able to trim them pretty effectively and check them on my Dillon headspace gauge to see that they do or will headspace properly, but I am unable to get the lengths to vary less than about 10 thousandths of an inch. The brass is all mixed with the majority Lake City and was fired through a handful of AR type rifles. I used a Redding full length sizing die on all of the brass on my Dillon 650.
Some of the brass is shorter than my trim length of 1.750 and I set that aside to mess with later. The rest of the brass I began to run through the Giraud at 1.750. You can easily tell which ones are being trimmed and which ones aren’t, so it’s easy to cull the ones at less than 1.750. What is bothering me is that the headspace on the trimmed cases looks good, but when I take my calipers and measure the cases at the end they are anywhere from 1.750 to 1.758 with the majority at about 1.755. I tried sorting some like head stamps and then focusing on those, which allowed me to get it down to 3-4 thousandths variation in total case length. This still didn’t seem that awesome to me. How much variation in case length is acceptable? Giraud says that you should be able to get it down to about 2 thousandths. What am I doing wrong if anything?
I know that the Giraud trims the case based upon the shoulder, or headspace, so I think that my shoulders must be uneven and uneven in such a way that my full length sizing is not uniforming them. Another way to say it would be that the headspaces will be uniform, but the cases will be slightly different lengths. Can I or should I remedy this? Is this because the brass has been fired through multiple rifles which alter the shoulder differently?
I’m actually pretty frustrated by this.
Interestingly, I learned to run the swage pretty fast. I could do about 14 cases per minute. You have to have total continuity and economy of motion and use both hands. Very nice.
The Giraud leaves the cases looking pretty awesome, but that's about as far as I have gotten.
Where I am hitting a wall is that I cannot get my cases trimmed to consistent lengths. I am able to trim them pretty effectively and check them on my Dillon headspace gauge to see that they do or will headspace properly, but I am unable to get the lengths to vary less than about 10 thousandths of an inch. The brass is all mixed with the majority Lake City and was fired through a handful of AR type rifles. I used a Redding full length sizing die on all of the brass on my Dillon 650.
Some of the brass is shorter than my trim length of 1.750 and I set that aside to mess with later. The rest of the brass I began to run through the Giraud at 1.750. You can easily tell which ones are being trimmed and which ones aren’t, so it’s easy to cull the ones at less than 1.750. What is bothering me is that the headspace on the trimmed cases looks good, but when I take my calipers and measure the cases at the end they are anywhere from 1.750 to 1.758 with the majority at about 1.755. I tried sorting some like head stamps and then focusing on those, which allowed me to get it down to 3-4 thousandths variation in total case length. This still didn’t seem that awesome to me. How much variation in case length is acceptable? Giraud says that you should be able to get it down to about 2 thousandths. What am I doing wrong if anything?
I know that the Giraud trims the case based upon the shoulder, or headspace, so I think that my shoulders must be uneven and uneven in such a way that my full length sizing is not uniforming them. Another way to say it would be that the headspaces will be uniform, but the cases will be slightly different lengths. Can I or should I remedy this? Is this because the brass has been fired through multiple rifles which alter the shoulder differently?
I’m actually pretty frustrated by this.