Hello, all.
I'm new to both this board and reloading.
My grandfather left me his reloading equipment when he passed away a few years ago. Recently, I got interested in hand loading and picked everything up from my dad's place. Included in the boxes were an RCBS JR3 and a half dozen or so sets of RCBS dies, among a few other things.
The JR3 still had a 30-30 Win FL die in it and it was fairly rusty, as was the press itself. In fact, I had to do a fairly liberal coating of lubricant on the press to even move the handle, but it's working great now.
To try to keep a long story as short as possible, I attempted to resize some 6mm Remington brass that I had already decapped and tumbled (and lubed with One Shot) and ran into a dead end. When the brass gets into the resizer with about 3/8 of an inch left before being completely in, it stopped. And I don't mean got tough, but completely stopped. I verified I had installed the correct die. My next thought was maybe decapping rod was out of alignment so I removed it and even with only the body of the die itself installed, it was still no go. I looked inside to make sure there was nothing foreign in there and then ran a lubed patch inside the die and it did indeed come out with some rust on it, which I think is my problem.
I had already done some .223 work, and it took a lot more effort to resize than I would have thought as well.
So, is there any way to clean these up or have them repolished or should I just ditch them all and start with new dies? I don't mind buying new ones as they're fairly cheap, all things considered. Just wondering if I'm maybe doing something else wrong as well.
FWIW, most if not all of these dies do have a small amount of rust on the outside, I guess it's fair to assume they have something on the outside as well.
Thanks very much for your time.
I'm new to both this board and reloading.
My grandfather left me his reloading equipment when he passed away a few years ago. Recently, I got interested in hand loading and picked everything up from my dad's place. Included in the boxes were an RCBS JR3 and a half dozen or so sets of RCBS dies, among a few other things.
The JR3 still had a 30-30 Win FL die in it and it was fairly rusty, as was the press itself. In fact, I had to do a fairly liberal coating of lubricant on the press to even move the handle, but it's working great now.
To try to keep a long story as short as possible, I attempted to resize some 6mm Remington brass that I had already decapped and tumbled (and lubed with One Shot) and ran into a dead end. When the brass gets into the resizer with about 3/8 of an inch left before being completely in, it stopped. And I don't mean got tough, but completely stopped. I verified I had installed the correct die. My next thought was maybe decapping rod was out of alignment so I removed it and even with only the body of the die itself installed, it was still no go. I looked inside to make sure there was nothing foreign in there and then ran a lubed patch inside the die and it did indeed come out with some rust on it, which I think is my problem.
I had already done some .223 work, and it took a lot more effort to resize than I would have thought as well.
So, is there any way to clean these up or have them repolished or should I just ditch them all and start with new dies? I don't mind buying new ones as they're fairly cheap, all things considered. Just wondering if I'm maybe doing something else wrong as well.
FWIW, most if not all of these dies do have a small amount of rust on the outside, I guess it's fair to assume they have something on the outside as well.
Thanks very much for your time.
