The Failure is Official

[Char-Gar]

I got the bright idea to open up an old spare Lyman 310 muzzle resizer (30-06) to .3325 by drilling it out and finishing with an 8.5mm chucking reamer. The idea was to work the brass less when using cast bullets.

I chucked the die in the Logan lathe and gave it a go. I could neither drill nor ream the old die. I would take carbide tooling to do that and I am not about to spend that kind of money on this fool notion. I did manage to ruin the die though.

Every other 310 die (seater, expander and decapper) is pretty soft and cuts like butter in the lathe, but Lyman really hardened these muzzle/neck resizing die.

I just pass this along for the benefit of any other fool who is contemplating this same idea. It didn't work!

[Wayne Smith]

Wow, that's good to know. I just polished out a seat die with the Dremel and red rouge. I'll bet the same thing is true with the old full length size dies.

[Catshooter]

Isn't experience a great teacher? But not much fun. I have done the same thing.


Cat

[EDG]

Making good decisions comes from wisdom and wisdom comes from experience. Experience comes from making bad decisions.

[Touchngo]

True wisdom is the ability to learn from others mistakes. I make enough on my own.


That's why this forum is so great. Thanks for sharing.

SS

[Fritz D]

I have a Lyman 310 die that was originally a 7mm neck sizer, but back in the 1960s my uncle had a gunsmith modify the die to neck size 7x61 Sharpe & Hart brass. I have no idea what kind of a reamer that gunsmith would have used, but not likely carbide. Maybe some of those dies are harder than others.

[slughammer]

Try some heat. I opened an old 30/30 size die to make a push through sizer and my cutters wouldn't touch it until I annealed it. One torch was taking too long on that much mass, so I screwed a tip on a second 1lb propane bottle and used 2 at the same time. Worked great and allowed me to make a very fine sizer. With the smaller mass of the 310 die, I bet one torch would be enough.
103936

[W.R.Buchanan]

ALL Education costs money. You can spend it at a college, or you can get married. Both provide a type of education.

Trial and error is another way to learn and may or maynot be cheaper. Generally it is not.

Everytime I "learn" something,,, I like to look back and assess what it actually cost.

Sometimes it is just better to pay someone to fix the problem,,, In which case,,, you are paying for "their" education.

There is no free way out of it. "Speed costs money,,, How fast do you want to go?"

Randy

[WILCO]

Isn't experience a great teacher? But not much fun.

It sure is Cat. It sure is.

[dubber123]

As Slughammer mentions, annealing will cure your problem. I had to anneal one of the Lyman dies I honed out, it was taking forever to hone until I heated it dull red and let it air cool first.

[Catshooter]

Annealing can work . . . until you run into air hardening steel. *sigh*

Some days it doesn't even pay to gnaw through the straps.


Cat

[Bad Water Bill]

Some days it doesn't even pay to gnaw through the straps.Cat

But it does keep those front teeth worn down.:bigsmyl2:

[largom]

A man only becomes great through many and great mistakes!

Larry

[DLCTEX]

I drilled more lube holes in a lubesizer die as the boolit I was sizing would not go deep enough to put lube in the groove. I heated the die with an acetylene torch to anneal, then heated and oil dropped it when done. I have since learned how to get the boolit deeper in the die, although that method escapes memory at the moment.lol

[Beau Cassidy]

ALL Education costs money. You can spend it at a college, or you can get married. Both provide a type of education.

Randy

Classic and so true!

[jmorris]

I did the same thing as slughammer. Hit the die with a file, and slid across. Heated the die and let it cool and the file would make a cut, then I machined it.

[cbrick]

ALL Education costs money. You can spend it at a college, or you can get married. Both provide a type of education. Randy

College is much, much cheaper! :roll:

Rick

[robg]

my father said a wise man never made the same mistake once

[Cactus Farmer]

The difference between a wise man and a smart man is the smart man learns from his mistakes, the wise man learns from others mistakes.
I am not always wise but I'm getting there........BTW,drawing blood is not necessary to learning but it sure improves your memory.

[Char-Gar]

As far as a learning curve goes, a good way to learn about steels and their hardness is to buy a lathe. You will find out what you can cut and what you can't cut pretty quick.

[popper]

Yup. Son showed me a broken garage door spring, asked if he could just bend a new hook in it for a fix. I said anneal it, bend it, then figure out how to spring harden it again. He decided to just get a new one. His wisdom was in knowing it wasn't worth the time to fix.

[454PB]

My initial machinist training was with tool steel, but all kinds of improvement happened when I met carbide tooling.

[theperfessor]

Carbide is great! Ceramic (Aluminum oxide based) is even better for some things.

[smokeywolf]

Hanging on the wall in my office in the MGM/Sony Machine Shop was a plack. Very neatly engraved in brass using a pantograph it said, "A Good Job Is Never Cheap." Just below that, scratched freehand in Gravaply it said, "And a Cheap Job is Never Good."

smokeywolf

[fiberoptik]

ALL Education costs money. You can spend it at a college, or you can get married. Both provide a type of education.....
There is no free way out of it.
Randy
Yeah but did you ever try hanging the wife on a nail in the wall like the diploma?? It's REALLY DANGEROUS!!![smilie=b: