Having some strange trouble. Bent two handles so far

Hey fellers, I'm having trouble with the Star.
Since I got it, I have completely switched over to it, and I use it for all of my lube sizing needs, and for the most part, it is awesome!

Unfortunately, there is this strange thing that happens, and for the life of me, I can't put my finger on exactly why. Every now and then, I have a problem running the boolits through the die. Doesn't happen every time, but occasionally it seems that the planets align just right, and I can't shove a boolit through that sucker to save my life!
Tonight was the latest (and worst) example of this. I was sizing 30 caliber boolits from .3110 down to .3102 (not doing anything wild and crazy here) and seating aluminum GC's on the bases at the same time.
I first started to get worried when I was setting up the punch depth to correctly lube the grooves and I noticed that things were pretty stiff. I kept running lubed boolits through the die, hoping that things would get easier, but nooooooo, things did not get easier.
Oh well, maybe I can still get the boolits through there with a GC, so I start sizing.
I felt like I was on a roll as the handle was bending a little more with each stroke, but at least the boolits were going through there, then one got stuck big as Christmas (mind you, I was still rerunning a boolit every 4th or 5th stroke to keep the die lubed). I darn near right angled my press handle and the boolit didn't move at all.
So I pushed the die up out of the press and used a brass punch and hammer to drive the boolit on through.
I got it set up again, changed to my spare handle, and started over agian. I didn't get three boolits through the die when I stuck another one. [smilie=b:

So I dug out my old push through die that works on the Rock Chucker and pushed a few through that with a trace of lube wiped on with my fingers. Easy money. The boolit went through the push through smoothly.
WTHeck is going on here?

Again, the alloy is 50/50 WW heat treated
The lube is FWFL
The checks are aluminum
I'm only sizing down .001 or less.

Anybody here dealt with this?

knowing your a machinist, I'm sure you already checked this...BUT...

The only time I ever got a boolit stuck in a sizer die, was on a lyman, I was using a rifle boolit with a brand NEW lyman die, I didn't prelube the die/boolit...a good idea for a brand new Die, since it hasn't seen lube yet.

STUCK so bad, I had to remove the Die, used a brass punch and hammer, to remove the boolit.

OK, I start over...I Prelubed the Boolit...Same exact thing.

I remove the Die, used a brass punch and hammer.

Then I looked into the Die with the "I" part removed...It was rough as all heck !

I polished it with some emery cloth then some flitz...then it worked great.

So the question is...Is this a NEW die ?

I have had this problem with aluminum gas checks. Bullets go through just fine without them on, but put an aluminum gas check on and they get very hard to push through. Don't have that problem with copper gas checks. I am sizing down .003 inches though.

I run into the same problem from time to time..
It funny that I mic a handful of boolits and they all mic the same (before sizing) some are harder then others to size.
On my Lee push thru I have to lube them before sizing. I just use lanolin/alchohol and light spray on them.
I am switching to 100% coating now and will start spraying them lightly before loading them in tubes. It dries quick.

OK, nevermind, I think I discovered what the problem is. That 50/50 alloy that I was talking about? Yeah, it's harder than WD Lyman#2.
27BHN.
The alloy is 98.5pb/1.5sb......certified.
Matter of fact, the #2 alloy went through the sizer like butter. Amazing.

Very hard alloy will do this!


I was going to suggest checking both as cast diameter and die diameter as sometimes things get "missed", LOL!

Since your alloy isn't 50/50 check your as cast again, they can grow pending age since "born"!

My experience with a Star is they do not like extremely hard alloy or sizing more than .001, you may have unknowingly been doing both!

Aluminum checks may require some Imperial sizing die wax before entering the die, prep the die with a Q-tip lubed with the sizing die wax and keep it handy for touch up's every 4 or 5 rounds!

You didn't mess up and make some checks from titanium did you? That would be a bit of a chore getting through a size die!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HeavyMetal

Very hard alloy will do this!


I was going to suggest checking both as cast diameter and die diameter as sometimes things get "missed", LOL!

Since your alloy isn't 50/50 check your as cast again, they can grow pending age since "born"!

My experience with a Star is they do not like extremely hard alloy or sizing more than .001, you may have unknowingly been doing both!

Aluminum checks may require some Imperial sizing die wax before entering the die, prep the die with a Q-tip lubed with the sizing die wax and keep it handy for touch up's every 4 or 5 rounds!

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No offence HM, but I am very rarely wrong about my measurements. There was that one time I thought I was wrong, but it turned out I was wrong. LOL!
The boolits were measured with a micrometer to the .0001 inch, before and after being passed through a die that has been verified as being the diameter stamped on top with precision pin gauges.

In point of fact, my alloy is 50/50 coww and soww, and the content of my metals have all been verified with XRF alloy testing. In this case, the alloy is pure lead + 1.5% Sb, and perhaps a veritable stiff of tin, but not enough to worry about.
This alloy drops on the bench at 8-9BHN
Water dropped is about 15 BHN
but these boolits were heat treated and came out 25-27BHN.
I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't measured it. Fascinating stuff.
The boolits were literally too hard to go through the Star sizer! That should make some awesome shooting boolits!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by goodsteel

these boolits were heat treated and came out 25-27BHN. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't measured it. Fascinating stuff.
The boolits were literally too hard to go through the Star sizer! That should make some awesome shooting boolits!

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Harder ain't better because they're harder, in fact rarely so. If your shooting top end 454 loads perhaps, maybe, could be, possibly.

How long did these 27 BHN boolits age harden? At what temp where they heat treated?

Rick

Tip of the day for Star lubers-------- always air cool your alloy! If you need / want harder boolits-------heat treat them after you run them through your Star. Heat treating results are more consistant, anyways, and less risk in damaging your Star.

Winelover

Yep. Hard alloy bad in Star.

I have some bullets I size in a Lee push thru first then lube via the Star for just this reason.

Now Tim knows why some people who do water drop size immediately after casting, before the alloy hardens much.

Some lessons just need to be learned the hard way. Just shows that even though we may have lots of experience every now and then something unexpected shows up and teaches us a new lesson.

More people need to learn this way, by doing. Reading only teaches so much, at some point a guy has to do. Sometimes the doing involves frustration that wasn't expected. THAT is learning.

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Originally Posted by cbrick

Harder ain't better because they're harder, in fact rarely so. If your shooting top end 454 loads perhaps, maybe, could be, possibly.

How long did these 27 BHN boolits age harden? At what temp where they heat treated?

Rick

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These boolits were heat treated at 450 degrees, and they were cast yesterday. (day before yesterday now).
They are intended for one purpose and that is HS cast shooting. I have made them out of several alloys, and this one is the HT one. I also have LYman #2 and this same alloy WQ at roughly half the BHN.
I'm going to be trying to get these to go 2600 FPS, out of a 21" 10 twist, thus all the hooplah. In this case, I think surface hardness might just be something I want but I've got to find where it matches the rifle and load.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by goodsteel;

That 50/50 alloy that I was talking about? Yeah, it's harder than WD Lyman#2.
27BHN. The alloy is 98.5pb/1.5sb......certified.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by goodsteel

These boolits were heat treated at 450 degrees, and they were cast yesterday. (day before yesterday now).
They are intended for one purpose and that is HS cast shooting. I have made them out of several alloys, and this one is the HT one. I also have LYman #2 and this same alloy WQ at roughly half the BHN.
I'm going to be trying to get these to go 2600 FPS, out of a 21" 10 twist, thus all the hooplah. In this case, I think surface hardness might just be something I want but I've got to find where it matches the rifle and load.

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Something's amiss . . . What determines the time it takes a Pb/Sb alloy to reach it's final/max strength/hardness after quenching/HT is the percentage of Sb, the lower the Sb percentage the longer it takes to reach it's final BHN and 1.5% Sb is a low percentage. One day for a 1.5% Sb alloy to reach 27 HN ???

Next, lead is not steel, lead does not have the same properties of or react like steel and there is a major difference in the result of quenching/HT steel and lead. If you quench harden steel you have a surface hardness, your a machinist so I'm sure your familiar with that but lead doesn't do that. When a lead alloy is quench hardened it is the same hardness all the way through, no surface hardening.

Rick

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cbrick

Something's amiss . . . What determines the time it takes a Pb/Sb alloy to reach it's final/max strength/hardness after quenching/HT is the percentage of Sb, the lower the Sb percentage the longer it takes to reach it's final BHN and 1.5% Sb is a low percentage. One day for a 1.5% Sb alloy to reach 27 HN ???

Next, lead is not steel, lead does not have the same properties of or react like steel and there is a major difference in the result of quenching/HT steel and lead. If you quench harden steel you have a surface hardness, your a machinist so I'm sure your familiar with that but lead doesn't do that. When a lead alloy is quench hardened it is the same hardness all the way through, no surface hardening.

Rick

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First of all, remember that I have no tin in this alloy?
Second, I am going to recheck this specific alloy in these boolits and confirm that when things were mixed together, I didn't have a piece of Linotype or something mixed in with my SOWW (very unlikely).
Third, I'm telling you what I observed, measured, and tested, which is how I make my living. I did not lie about what I did. I cast a bunch of boolits out of an alloy that was precisely 50% COWW ingots and 50% SOWW by weight.
Those boolits were allowed to set over night, and into the next day till about noon, at witch point, I put them all in the tray of my toaster oven, set the dial to 450 degrees, and set the 30 minute timer. I let it ding three times which gave me a soak at temperature of at least 1 hour.
At that point, I pulled the tray out of the oven and slid all the boolits into a 5 gallon bucket of water as gently as I could.
The water was dumped out of the bucket about 30 minutes later, and the boolits were slid gently into a tupperware container with a towel in the bottom of it.
The boolits set all day, and at 7:00 pm (roughly) I started trying to set up my Star lube sizer and ran into trouble.

When these boolits were compared to boolits cast of Lyman #2 alloy that were made on the same day, but only water dropped, the 50/50 boolits were superior in hardness by about 8-10 BHN (#2 measured 18-22BHN)

That's what happened. It is not normal, but I was using an unusual alloy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by goodsteel

Third, I'm telling you what I observed, measured, and tested, which is how I make my living. I did not lie about what I did.

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Geez, who said you were lying? I simply posted the metallurgy of a Pb/Sb alloy.

No wonder I don't post anymore.

Rick

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cbrick

Geez, who said you were lying? I simply posted the metallurgy of a Pb/Sb alloy.

No wonder I don't post anymore.

Rick

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It was a figure of speach. I didn't mean anything by it. I was just explaining myself better.
I really need to use more emoticons. LOL!

If anything I was agreeing with you that this is very very strange, and I'm going to investigate further. I'm still shocked at the hardness of these boolits. Since starting this thread, I have been in contact with another member who has experianced similar results and is a step ahead of me in his investigations. He has no tin in his alloy either.
Very strange.

Is it possible that your mold had something in between the blocks one time and falling out for the next, giving a larger than normal set of bullets, and you didn't notice them in the pile. It wouldn't take much.

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Originally Posted by Old Caster

Is it possible that your mold had something in between the blocks one time and falling out for the next, giving a larger than normal set of bullets, and you didn't notice them in the pile. It wouldn't take much.

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No that is not possible.
Actually it is, as it does happen occasionally, but I check the mold faces regularly,
as well as sight through the blocks occasionally,
as well as check a percentage of the boolits with a micrometer,
as well as check a percentage of the boolits with my hardness tester,
as well as check my alloys with XRF alloy testing machine,
as well as checking every blamed one of them with my scale.
I like to measure things and I throw everything I've got at my boolits so that when I see something, I'm sure I'm actually seeing what I am seeing. However, I still get skunked occasionally.
That's why I am going to have this alloy retested for content.