Swampman
Old Fart
Originally posted by blarby
Severely untrue Sir!
At least that hasn't been my experience while resizing 1500, Armor Piercing, M2 and 500 Armor Piercing Incendiary, M8, machine pulled .50 Caliber Bullets.
I have no scientific evidence to back this up, but I'll wager those cores are considerably harder than the mild steel used in Chinese steel core ball. There's also a heckuva lot more bearing surface and much thinner walls on the die.
I did "cheat" and lube the bullets with Mobil1 full synthetic motor oil. There was no noticeable wear on the die and the last bullet I did was the same .510" as the first.
I'll grant that the .50 cal bullets had gilding metal jackets whereas the Chinese 7.62x39 projectiles are likely copper washed steel, but I don't think that'd make any difference.
The steel used in bullet jackets is formulated and annealed to make it pretty soft since hard steel jackets would wear out even a chrome lined bore in short order.
Apparently I'm not the only person to use the Lee dies on .50 BMG succesfully. Check out the reviews in the link below.
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/155655/lee-bullet-lube-and-size-kit-510-diameter
I've also sized a few Czech 147 grain .311 LPS, steel core, copper washed steel jacketed bullets to .308 using the Lee sizer and Imperial Case Lube. There were no problems doing this except that the accuracy of the bullets sucked in my M1a, so I only did 30 of 'em.
Severely untrue Sir!
At least that hasn't been my experience while resizing 1500, Armor Piercing, M2 and 500 Armor Piercing Incendiary, M8, machine pulled .50 Caliber Bullets.
I have no scientific evidence to back this up, but I'll wager those cores are considerably harder than the mild steel used in Chinese steel core ball. There's also a heckuva lot more bearing surface and much thinner walls on the die.
I did "cheat" and lube the bullets with Mobil1 full synthetic motor oil. There was no noticeable wear on the die and the last bullet I did was the same .510" as the first.
I'll grant that the .50 cal bullets had gilding metal jackets whereas the Chinese 7.62x39 projectiles are likely copper washed steel, but I don't think that'd make any difference.
The steel used in bullet jackets is formulated and annealed to make it pretty soft since hard steel jackets would wear out even a chrome lined bore in short order.
Apparently I'm not the only person to use the Lee dies on .50 BMG succesfully. Check out the reviews in the link below.
http://www.midwayusa.com/product/155655/lee-bullet-lube-and-size-kit-510-diameter
I've also sized a few Czech 147 grain .311 LPS, steel core, copper washed steel jacketed bullets to .308 using the Lee sizer and Imperial Case Lube. There were no problems doing this except that the accuracy of the bullets sucked in my M1a, so I only did 30 of 'em.
