Swaging dies to reduce head diameter

[Danth]

I made a set of head reducing dies following the directions in Nonte's book. I"m having trouble keeping the rim from distorting. I'm using an
arbor press with sufficient power and am attempting to swage 30-06 down to 6.5 Arisaka. Should the brass be lubed? In the directions, it is not mentioned. Thanks, Dan

[EDG]

Dan
Yes you absolutely must lube the cases with some extreme high pressure grease. I used Mystik JT6 chassis lube in the green tube but most any high pressure automotive grease would work better than nothing.
I performed that same operation in several steps and found it was not worth the trouble.
I used older open top .44 Rem Mag steel sizers which are about .450 inside dia polished out to the size I wanted. I got it to work but split 2 dies doing that.
If you have a lathe it is much easier to use US brands (RP and WW) of .303 British brass and turn the rims to fit your bolt face. Then form the cases.
The problem you may run into is the factory brass and factory ammo are much smaller than the 6.5 chambers. So are most dies since they are designed to resize the brass back to the same old under size dimensions. I have RCBS, Herters and Lee FL sizers and they are all too small.

Instead I have a Pacific trim die and a Bonanza NECK sizing die that actually sizes the cases to fit the Arisaka chamber. Finding such a die is pretty rare. But that is the way it is with the bad combo of under size dies and brass in the larger Arisaka chambers.

You might consider forming your brass by what ever method you deem fit and once you fire it only neck size it.

To answer your exact question the cases I swaged were 7.62 Nato 1966 Match cases. Because I did it in steps my case heads did not distort. Swagging that brass was hard on my press and I doubt many presses would last long doing that. An automotive hydraulic bearing press would be much better. There is some potential for danger at those high pressures if you shatter a die the fragments may cause injury.

However my rims were standard .468. My bolt face was .501 so the fit was very sloppy. Using .303 cases permitted me to make the rims a much closer fit to my bolt.