Over the summer I picked up a couple of hundred 223 brass at the shooting range (mixed head stamp) thinking I may want/need to resize them to 221 Fireball. The lack of availability of 221 Fireball brass tells me resizing is probably a good thing to learn to do.
I don't have the "conversion dies" like are offered by Redding or RCBS but when I bought my 221 Fireball die set(s) on eBay I got a set of Hornady New Dimension Dies (2 die FL set) and a set of RCBS dies (2 die FL set). The RCBS FL sizer die did not come with the expander ball mechanism and I have been using the Hornady dies to make my Fireball ammo.
Yesterday I got motivated to try some case reforming after reading a thread on another forum because they were not using the conversion die set, just an ordinary FL sizer die with the expander ball stem removed to resize the brass. So, I cleaned and polished the RCBS FL sizer die missing the expander and tried my hand at reforming some brass in my Ultramag press. The Ultramag made reforming the case almost effortless.
This is where I am. I did 40 cases because I had that many open slots in a cartridge tray. I lost two cases during the initial reforming step. I adjusted the RCBS "case forming die" so the shoulder was a few thousandths of an inch higher than needed. My thinking here was to do a final resize just like a fire formed case when the neck was cut to the proper length. The picture shows a 223 case (left), a reformed 223 case with the long neck, a "finished product reformed case" from 223 to 221 Fireball, and a factory 221 Fireball (far right).
What I'm struggling with is rough cutting the excess neck so I can FL size them in the Hornady die, decap, and do a final trim to length. I don't have a lathe type trimmer, just the Lee Case Length Trimmer set up with the Lock Stud and Cutter. I can expand the neck of the long neck case with the Hornady expander ball w/o decapping if needed but the neck is way too long to use with the Lee Case Length Trimmer.
I tried using a hacksaw and holding the case in the Lee Lock Stud. That was not good, I trashed too many cases. I also tried using a really fat drill bit and boring down the center of the neck to do a rough cut. That didn't work well either, I couldn't keep it on center. I'm thinking about buying a Dremel Tool to rough cut the case neck and it would be nice to have a jig of some type to get a controlled and consistent length rough cut on the brass.
Any suggestions?
I don't have the "conversion dies" like are offered by Redding or RCBS but when I bought my 221 Fireball die set(s) on eBay I got a set of Hornady New Dimension Dies (2 die FL set) and a set of RCBS dies (2 die FL set). The RCBS FL sizer die did not come with the expander ball mechanism and I have been using the Hornady dies to make my Fireball ammo.
Yesterday I got motivated to try some case reforming after reading a thread on another forum because they were not using the conversion die set, just an ordinary FL sizer die with the expander ball stem removed to resize the brass. So, I cleaned and polished the RCBS FL sizer die missing the expander and tried my hand at reforming some brass in my Ultramag press. The Ultramag made reforming the case almost effortless.
This is where I am. I did 40 cases because I had that many open slots in a cartridge tray. I lost two cases during the initial reforming step. I adjusted the RCBS "case forming die" so the shoulder was a few thousandths of an inch higher than needed. My thinking here was to do a final resize just like a fire formed case when the neck was cut to the proper length. The picture shows a 223 case (left), a reformed 223 case with the long neck, a "finished product reformed case" from 223 to 221 Fireball, and a factory 221 Fireball (far right).
What I'm struggling with is rough cutting the excess neck so I can FL size them in the Hornady die, decap, and do a final trim to length. I don't have a lathe type trimmer, just the Lee Case Length Trimmer set up with the Lock Stud and Cutter. I can expand the neck of the long neck case with the Hornady expander ball w/o decapping if needed but the neck is way too long to use with the Lee Case Length Trimmer.
I tried using a hacksaw and holding the case in the Lee Lock Stud. That was not good, I trashed too many cases. I also tried using a really fat drill bit and boring down the center of the neck to do a rough cut. That didn't work well either, I couldn't keep it on center. I'm thinking about buying a Dremel Tool to rough cut the case neck and it would be nice to have a jig of some type to get a controlled and consistent length rough cut on the brass.
Any suggestions?