OK, this question keeps coming up and since I never lubed my 9mm brass while many insisted they have to, over the years I did some digging and these are what I have found:
- Not all carbide sizer rings are made the same - Most use straight carbide ring but Lee carbide sizer ring is tapered, like the tapered profile of 9mm brass
- Some carbide sizer rings have sharp, squared die opening while Lee tapered carbide sizer ring has radiused opening
- Most USPSA 9mm Major match shooters do not mark their brass and will not reuse the brass. They leave these overly expanded brass for unsuspecting reloaders to wonder why it takes much more effort to resize some 9mm brass
- Dry tumbling brass in media treated with NuFinish liquid polish leaves light coating of residual polymer which helps with resizing effort
- Wet tumbling brass leaves brass surface squeaky clean (Think more friction)
Even when resizing 9mm brass on Pro 1000, especially with new linkage and ergo handle, I did not need to lube my 9mm brass. I have always dry tumbled my brass and for most of my reloading years have used NuFinish polish (Recently using Turtle Wax polish) with great results in terms of polishing and residual polymer on brass keeping brass tarnish free.
When 9mm Major brass started showing up, I noticed greater resizing effort and now chamber check these brass and if they won't pass the plunk test, I will attempt to resize again and if brass fails the second time, consider the brass overly expanded (Think thinned case wall) and toss for recycling.
Now using Auto Breech Lock Pro (I guess Lee is back to calling it Pro 4000
), resizing 9mm brass is easily done and resizing 40S&W/45ACP brass is effortless (Well, it was almost effortless on Pro 1000 too).
These are not my brass picture but shows the scrape mark resizing some overly expanded brass with some brand resizing die could result -
https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/9mm-resize-die.863126/page-2#post-11381953
These are brass resized with Lee tapered carbide sizer ring - I think the radiused die opening helps smooth out even overly expanded brass and with tapered carbide ring, resize brass without scraping.