Question....does anyway use the dry neck lube for the inside of their necks with expander mandrels or do you use regular lube/die wax? If so which do you prefer?
The problem with using regular lube/wax is that you have to clean it out or it will tend to cause powder to stick to it during charging. It sounds like you're doing that anyway, so it should be ok to use with your SAC die.
However...
This also means that you're not lubing your necks for seating. If you over-clean your necks and don't apply lube, they tend to get very "sticky" during seating. To address this:
- Some people don't clean their necks, instead simply brushing them to release some of the carbon. This acts as a neck lube.
- Some people clean their brass, then apply neck lube for seating to provide more consistency (I am in this camp - primarily because I don't like running dirty cases through my dies).
Of the folks who do apply neck lube, there are a number of different options:
- Use Imperial Neck Lube graphite - dry powder applied by dipping cases in 1mm beads coated in it. This CAN have issues sticking to annealed necks, depending on your process. It doesn't for my process - if you're interested as to why, I can post my theory later - but it's only a theory at this point.
- Use Moly powder. The only issue here is that the only commercially available application mechanism for this is from 21st Century Shooting and for some unknown reason they use 3mm beads as application media - which is completely unacceptably large and they get stuck in smaller cases. I mean for a company that puts out such great stuff, for them to put this out is just poor product development. Fortunately, you can buy 1mm beads on Amazon and make your own.
- Use liquid NeoLube2. Yes... liquid. However, it is graphite suspended in alcohol with a light resin added in and it dries fairly quickly. It coats very evenly and smoothly and ends up looking almost like a paint.
I've tested these fairly extensively and have found that the various lubes/methods rank in this order:
1) Neolube
2) Moly
3) Graphite (with caveats)
4) Don't clean necks and just brush
I will say, however, that the differences between all of these are so small that it's best just to find the one that works the best for you in the process and go with it.
If you're interested in the efficacy of neck lube and how it delivers results, it's in the second half of the video below:
