Greetings Masters,
As a novice I seek wisdom and/or correction.
I'm loading 45acp, and up to this point I have only loaded fired brass.
Today I figured it'd be a hoot to buy some brand new shiny Starline .45ACP brass. I read somewhere that it would make me shoot better and solve world hunger at the same time.
I noticed when I ran the case up into the Lee 45acp Powder Thru Expanding Die (with Lee case activated auto-drum attached and dropping my powder charge) it felt a little gritty then took a seemingly unrealistic amount of effort to pull back out of the neck expander. So much that it was lifting my Lee reloading stand with the cinder block underneath off the ground.
This was a consistent experience. I thought maybe something was wrong with the die, so I tried a random fired case I had laying around and it worked just fine. Back to the Starline and it was really getting stuck hard in there.
I thought maybe the die was too aggressive, but when I backed it out I noticed it was not flaring enough (tore up a boolit figuring that out) so I'm flaring just barely enough for the boolit seating to function without ripping the copper jackets off my boolits.
Maybe it's just Starline? Maybe it is just the way new brass "is" and I've just never tried it before?
So I pulled my Lee 45acp Powder Thru Expanding Die apart and observed the plug was covered in brass debris. I've never bothered to clean it after the initial cleaning/setup so I don't know if all the debris was from the Starline or collectively from many cases. I gave it a good rub down with alcohol and reassembled it. Still the same issue.
Next I got my handy Redding Imperial Sizing Wax and started lightly wiping the case mouth of each case before running it into the Lee 45acp Powder Thru Expanding Die and the operation started to get a little smoother.
Is my experience typical with new brass, is there a better way to solve the "problem", is there even a "problem" or am i just doing it wrong, am I gonna blow my face off at some point, all of the above?
thank you for any advice (good or bad), entertaining war stories, and for not trying to sell me anything (the war room is currently not approving any future spending for this year)