Re: DIY Chamber Length Gauge
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: badeyes</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I believe VarmintAl has what you are looking for on his reloading page.
http://www.varmintal.com/arelo.htm#CaseHead. Scroll up to Case Trimming, Poor Man's Gage. </div></div>
I went to that page to see your reference and emerged an hour later,having read lots of excellent information besides the poor mans chamber gauge. He and I share a lot of similar opinions and ideas, but the sheer quantity of good ideas and accompanying data he churns out is quite humbling. Thanks for the link.
I use a similar technique to his for smoothing case mouths. Instead of spinning the steel wool in a cup though, I spin the case using a Lee lock stud from their case length kits while reaming and chamfering. Once deburred inside and out, I take a pad of 0000 steel wool in the palm of my hand and press the spinning case mouth against it until I feel the drag of the edge of the mouth on the pad drop suddenly. At that point, it is smooth.
Like him, I also Flitz my dies. and expander balls. I hate taking the decapping stem out to clean the imperial wax buildup out of a die and seeing brass built up on the expander ball like bullets load up the bore with copper. That just can't be good for accurate resizing the neck ID after case resizing.
Also, in my inexpensive Midway case neck prep kit. The one with the nylon bore brushes in a blue plastic holder, with an area in the front to put some powdered mica that comes with it in. It brushes the inside of the case necks leaving a fine coating of mica dust inside to reduce the expander ball friction and fight brass buildup during resizing, in concert with the case lube on the outside. I found that instead of mica, using .5 micron teflon powder instead, does an even better job. I usually give the decapped and resized brass a tumble afterward anyway and it cleans the residual teflon powder off from inside the neck, rather than having a little still in there when I seat the bullet.
A lot of my reloading friends find amusement at the lengths I go to with my cases, but I figure, even if it only contributes a miniscule performance enhancement from each step, these small steps do add up to enhance results and equally important, they serve to add consistency, albeit small amounts per step, to each rounds behavior.
Lot of other small OCP steps I do, but I don't want to put everyone to sleep, assuming I haven't already done so. If nothing else, these steps give me a small degree of confidence for each one I do and we all know the value of positive thinking on groups.
John "Hoot" Hill
