Hello CasCity, I'm new here. And have been looking for anyone perhaps with slightly similar experience. I figure since action shooters fire a heck of a lot, maybe this is the right place.
Bought a '66 uberti almost 2 years ago. It's a 24" Barrel.
made around 2002 it comes with the flip ups which I like, never was to good with buckhorns, but Im not competition shooting anyway.
So it's by far the most shooting than anything else I have, real fun and accurate, the day I brought it home I was tagging at 92 yards to an 8" plate, mind you I don't think I'm any great shot. I began to reload as I knew I'd be shooting a lot.
First problem was trying to be as cheap as possible, I bought a Lee classic loader, I have a lot of time on my hands, so the process wasn't all that bad as I'd do a bunch of cases for each step as opposed to 1 bullet start to finish.
My choice was 5.6 grains titegroup, a 250gr. LRNFP I liked throwing the hunk down range to the plate and hearing the ring.
Starline brass.
The short of it was after firing 400 bullets this way, I was on my 4th reload of a particular brass and the head ripped off in the chamber and the remaining case wall was form fitted to the chamber.
As the smith that worked on it told me the case he thought was extremely thin and the chamber being slightly larger there was nothing to grab to push with a dowel, not to mention what will you really get a bite on in a 24" barrel. The brass was smooth to the bore so It took the man some time to extract it, I don't think he tried a melted lead to remove it, and honestly I should get some of that stuff on hand and try that first, I'm thankfull the smith got the case out but it was a 150 bones.
It's become my conclusion, obviously not to reload for the '66 with the Lee classic loading system as all the pounding may have weakened and thinned the cases, thus I'm a set of dies away from beginning to reload on a Lee quick release single press.
I'm also learning that case lubing may have been more important as all I had done was spray with WD-40.
So I'm asking prior to lubing get cases as clean as possible? Now oddly enough because I'm shooting such a light load I have seen some black on the cases, blow by? I imagine they must be cleaned better and lubed so as not to get stuck in my dies?
I ask this because Ive seen post about cases stuck in dies, I don't need that problem either! Ha!
Being I was bitten so hard on this last problem, I feel as though I'll get new brass, shoot them and reload only once for use in this rifle, at 20 dollars for a 100, that will affect cost a bit, but better than the alternative. Any advice from experience is greatly welcomed.
john