Just adding a hypothesis as to why some changes to the carbon and combustion products in the neck may be similar atomically, but act very different tribologically. Back before airplanes could fly very high, it was widely understood that powdered graphite was a fair dry lubricant. As electrical commutations became necessary, the use of different forms of graphite and carbon were used as the brushes for commutation. What happens next, is as the altitudes and duration at altitude increased during WWII, a rash of premature failures in those brushes opened investigations. In time, they discovered that carbon morphology mattered, and the difference went from a decent dry lube to becoming an abrasive. The root cause was discovered to be the presence of water. This is why other solid or powdered lubricants are used in dry gas or vacuum. In lower warmer air the humidity was high enough at the atomic level to let graphite act as a lubricant, but, in higher colder air the humidity was so low that the graphite transitioned into an abrasive. Changes were made to the commutations destined for high altitude or very dry atmospheres to avoid rapid wear from dry graphite. The lessons learned, were that even materials one would assume are inert, can transform from lubricious to abrasive with subtle changes like the presence of water or a change in morphology. The annealing step certainly has a potential to stimulate changes with heat. Since a subtle change in an oxide layer, or the graphite form from the combustion products, or just cooking off the water, can alter the friction coefficient, I am not at all surprised with the results. I would also caution the other commenters about getting necks and bullets squeaky clean. Two similar nascent metals rubbing under pressure opens the doorway to adhesive friction and galling, which is even more erratic than typical high friction. The Neolube graphite or MoS2 will both help reduce both the average friction and the extreme spread of the friction compared to bare necks against clean bullets. Thanks for sharing your work.
What works best for my ppc is annealing no brush and then lubing just the case no bullet with moli in an acetone solution .262 neck turned thinner then normal just thought I would through that in.I sure do love these videos keep it up
I haven't been brushing prior to annealing and I was adding lube (graphite) prior to seating with the AMP. What I did notice was any caliber under 6.5mm often the press would hit very high seating force, sometimes just stopping altogether prior to seating completely. If I added the graphite, then the seating would complete. The AMP has truly opened my eyes to how tiny little steps added or removed really impact downrange groups.
Wow,wee. Thank you for taking the time of doing this test for us nitwit's.. Eventhough I don't have the amp-press. I have done a similar test, all equal but with no graphic data of course 😉. With my reloading components, and found that similarly to your findings. Awesome man,good job!
Thanks Brian very fascinating. Hard to believe one extra brush stroke makes any difference. I’ve always wondered about using brass polish on a cotton barrel cleaner. It seems like the smoothest neck would be the most consistent. Evan if you had to raise powder charge to compensate for velocity loss. It would be awesome to have a chamber pressure gauge like the powder company’s have to see correlations between pressure velocity and groups.
Appreciate your science based analysis and results displayed on paper. I modified my reloading practices slightly in neck cleaning and lube application, resulting in smaller group size at long range.
@@WitchDoctorPrecision Steps added to my reloading process 1. measuring primer seating depth 2. neolube neck and bullet 3. cleaning neck prior to annealing 4. sorting primers by weight. All these changes thanks to your analysis. Sure appreciate you sharing your testing results. Lee
Hey Bryan Love your indepth analysis stuff in important areas of reloading for accuracy/precision! BUT you really need to work on your lighting when doing your vids. That strip light above your work space needs to be turned off for sure! Then maybe a couple of cheap stand light/floods from Harbor Freight would help overall?? Just a suggestion to upgrade your excellent videos :-)
I thoroughly clean my case next Before & After annealing But I also lube my case necks and bullets like you do from one of your previous videos I did 4 3 shot groups last night after using my new creed more sports Powder scale For my loads The results were four single hole 3 shot groups With an extreme spread of 7' per 2nd And standard deviation of two I'm shooting A 6BR Norma Using varget powder and BR4 primers. These are the best results I've ever had Thank you for your awesome videos love your channel
Thanks again Bryan. Surprising results. A test where you wet clean the cases first and then anneal and lube would really round out these test. Wet cleaning would eliminate any inconsistencies created by the powder deposits in the neck.
Hey Ed, I do that process in a slightly different order. I shoot, decap, anneal then wet tumble in stainless pins, size, prime then lube necks with a home made wet graphite lube(graphite powder suspended in iso alcohol). I found that if I don't lube a clean neck it results in significantly higher SD/ES and results in larger average group size in my 6PPC.
@@MMBRM I've re-ordered my steps several times. I agree that lubing necks is critical to low ES/SD. I also made the same graphite neck lube, but found that most of the lube flakes off during seating and wondered about having that same carbon inside the case with the powder. So I use a bore mop lightly coated with case lube and graphite. You see a very fine coating inside the neck and not all the flaking off carbon when seating.
I am also using a different method eliminating the wet tumble. After firing, I paper towel clean the necks with 90% alcohol, then anneal, followed by dry tumbling in medium grain rice, then lube and seat. That rice tumble puts sort of a slick sheen on the neck surface. You can feel the difference when you seat.
@@edhyde1741 I like wet tumbling as it cleans the inside of the case as well. Eliminates the carbon build up which changes the internal case capacity. If you take multiple times fired brass that has been cleaned with dry media and full size it the carbon that flakes off can be readily seen by tapping the case upside down on a hard surface. Haven't tested to see if that makes any perceptible difference though. Since I anneal every time and wet tumble to clean every time it feels like I'm starting from the same initial condition. Makes it less important to keep the the brass matched by exact number of firings. I also found that annealing could leave a hard "glaze" on the neck that dry tumbling didn't remove. Could be the difference in concentration but when I apply the the lube with a foam q-tip and swipe it around the inside of the neck a for a few rotations I get a thin uniform coating that doesn't seem to flake. Could be because I'm starting from a clean neck? There's just so many variables at the end of the day! Cheers.
Hello Bryan, i think that Lou Murdica mentioned it, but N133 needs or at least, likes High(er) Neck Tension. So if you did use N133, that could be what you saw on the Targets
A question Bryan: Do you think that cleaning brass in corn cobb prior to annealing (with the Amp machine) accomplishes the same effect as brushing the necks prior to annealing?
I really do not know but you could test this by comparing precision with corn cobb cleaning vs. brush. I’ll add this to my list of potential follow up tests.
@@palmersasscer7462 I just checked into this. I used my standard corn Cobb media with polish. It turns out that the brushed only brass (15 pieces) showed overall higher seating pressures relative to the 15 pieces of corn cobb cleaned (not brushed) brass. I think the polish in the corn cobb adds some lubrication to the inside of the neck which is why it seated with less pressure. I will head to the range soon and shoot all of these and see if there is any effects on precision. I will make a video on this after all the shooting is done. Thanks for inspiring a test.
Bryan, I have a question for you. I'm assuming you don't clean the inside of your cases. Are you concerned about getting to much carbon building up inside the case that could cause case complicity change?
I’ve never had an issue with case capacity. I’ve shot many cartridges and powders and don’t seem to have ever had that issue. I have loaded very stout at times too and fired some brass over 80 times. I do use a 12 inch drop tube on most applications so maybe case capacity decreases after several firings but I’ve never had an issue with getting all the powder I want in a case. Have you had this issue?
@@WitchDoctorPrecision I'm fairly new to reloading. I have changed my process a few times in the last couple of years. I started off dry media tumbling then moved to wet tumbling with stainless steel, and now I just wet tumble without media. I do shot bolt and semi auto and those cases get pretty dirty. My learning curve comes with a lot of questions. I have tried lubricating the inside of the necks, I used what I have, hornady case lube and did see a huge reduction in seating pressure. With your latest video, I'm going to use this procedure on all my reloading.
Bryan, Before you lube the bullets with Neolube 2 do you remove and factory coating from the bullets? I have experimented with removing the coating from Berger bullets with solvent drying them and then using a vibratory cleaner with Flitz case cleaner added. I then tumble the bullets in paper towel pieces to remove any major residual coating. These bullets usually seat with 30 to 35 psi seating pressure and shoot well. I am following all of your videos ( great info ) and was wondering if you had thought about the factory coating.
No, I haven’t. Most of the time I use hand swaged bullets so they come out very clean. I will consider this for factory made bullets. Have you seen any difference in cleaning factory made or not?
Extremely interesting results. Thank you.
Just adding a hypothesis as to why some changes to the carbon and combustion products in the neck may be similar atomically, but act very different tribologically. Back before airplanes could fly very high, it was widely understood that powdered graphite was a fair dry lubricant. As electrical commutations became necessary, the use of different forms of graphite and carbon were used as the brushes for commutation. What happens next, is as the altitudes and duration at altitude increased during WWII, a rash of premature failures in those brushes opened investigations. In time, they discovered that carbon morphology mattered, and the difference went from a decent dry lube to becoming an abrasive. The root cause was discovered to be the presence of water. This is why other solid or powdered lubricants are used in dry gas or vacuum. In lower warmer air the humidity was high enough at the atomic level to let graphite act as a lubricant, but, in higher colder air the humidity was so low that the graphite transitioned into an abrasive. Changes were made to the commutations destined for high altitude or very dry atmospheres to avoid rapid wear from dry graphite.
The lessons learned, were that even materials one would assume are inert, can transform from lubricious to abrasive with subtle changes like the presence of water or a change in morphology. The annealing step certainly has a potential to stimulate changes with heat. Since a subtle change in an oxide layer, or the graphite form from the combustion products, or just cooking off the water, can alter the friction coefficient, I am not at all surprised with the results.
I would also caution the other commenters about getting necks and bullets squeaky clean. Two similar nascent metals rubbing under pressure opens the doorway to adhesive friction and galling, which is even more erratic than typical high friction. The Neolube graphite or MoS2 will both help reduce both the average friction and the extreme spread of the friction compared to bare necks against clean bullets. Thanks for sharing your work.
So glad I discovered your channel. Love your data driven approach as opposed to “that’s what everyone says”.
One good test is worth a million expert opinions :)
What works best for my ppc is annealing no brush and then lubing just the case no bullet with moli in an acetone solution .262 neck turned thinner then normal just thought I would through that in.I sure do love these videos keep it up
I haven't been brushing prior to annealing and I was adding lube (graphite) prior to seating with the AMP. What I did notice was any caliber under 6.5mm often the press would hit very high seating force, sometimes just stopping altogether prior to seating completely. If I added the graphite, then the seating would complete. The AMP has truly opened my eyes to how tiny little steps added or removed really impact downrange groups.
Wow,wee.
Thank you for taking the time of doing this test for us nitwit's..
Eventhough I don't have the amp-press.
I have done a similar test, all equal but with no graphic data of course 😉.
With my reloading components, and found that similarly to your findings.
Awesome man,good job!
Thanks Bryan for your videos, a real treasure trove, keep them coming!
Bryan, great test! Please put me on a wish list for Your book: Encyclopedia of modern reloading!
Another great video! Thanks for all the effort Bryan. This helps answer a lot of questions I have. Looking forward to your next video.
Thanks Brian very fascinating. Hard to believe one extra brush stroke makes any difference. I’ve always wondered about using brass polish on a cotton barrel cleaner. It seems like the smoothest neck would be the most consistent. Evan if you had to raise powder charge to compensate for velocity loss. It would be awesome to have a chamber pressure gauge like the powder company’s have to see correlations between pressure velocity and groups.
Appreciate your science based analysis and results displayed on paper. I modified my reloading practices slightly in neck cleaning and lube application, resulting in smaller group size at long range.
Good to hear! What do you do now that you believe has shrunk the groups?
@@WitchDoctorPrecision Steps added to my reloading process 1. measuring primer seating depth 2. neolube neck and bullet 3. cleaning neck prior to annealing 4. sorting primers by weight. All these changes thanks to your analysis. Sure appreciate you sharing your testing results. Lee
Hey Bryan Love your indepth analysis stuff in important areas of reloading for accuracy/precision! BUT you really need to work on your lighting when doing your vids. That strip light above your work space needs to be turned off for sure! Then maybe a couple of cheap stand light/floods from Harbor Freight would help overall?? Just a suggestion to upgrade your excellent videos :-)
Thanks! I want to look into some form of studio lighting system that makes everything clear.
Great video and analysis.
What product do you like to use for lubing the case necks??
Neolube #2
I thoroughly clean my case next Before & After annealing But I also lube my case necks and bullets like you do from one of your previous videos
I did 4 3 shot groups last night after using my new creed more sports Powder scale For my loads The results were four single hole 3 shot groups With an extreme spread of 7' per 2nd And standard deviation of two
I'm shooting A 6BR Norma
Using varget powder and BR4 primers. These are the best results I've ever had Thank you for your awesome videos love your channel
Have you tried h4350? I switched from varget to 4350 and using br4 primers, it's shooting 0.02 3 round groups. 26 inch barrel, lapua brass 6br Norma.
Thanks again Bryan. Surprising results. A test where you wet clean the cases first and then anneal and lube would really round out these test. Wet cleaning would eliminate any inconsistencies created by the powder deposits in the neck.
Hey Ed, I do that process in a slightly different order. I shoot, decap, anneal then wet tumble in stainless pins, size, prime then lube necks with a home made wet graphite lube(graphite powder suspended in iso alcohol). I found that if I don't lube a clean neck it results in significantly higher SD/ES and results in larger average group size in my 6PPC.
@@MMBRM I've re-ordered my steps several times. I agree that lubing necks is critical to low ES/SD. I also made the same graphite neck lube, but found that most of the lube flakes off during seating and wondered about having that same carbon inside the case with the powder. So I use a bore mop lightly coated with case lube and graphite. You see a very fine coating inside the neck and not all the flaking off carbon when seating.
I am also using a different method eliminating the wet tumble. After firing, I paper towel clean the necks with 90% alcohol, then anneal, followed by dry tumbling in medium grain rice, then lube and seat. That rice tumble puts sort of a slick sheen on the neck surface. You can feel the difference when you seat.
@@edhyde1741 I like wet tumbling as it cleans the inside of the case as well. Eliminates the carbon build up which changes the internal case capacity. If you take multiple times fired brass that has been cleaned with dry media and full size it the carbon that flakes off can be readily seen by tapping the case upside down on a hard surface. Haven't tested to see if that makes any perceptible difference though. Since I anneal every time and wet tumble to clean every time it feels like I'm starting from the same initial condition. Makes it less important to keep the the brass matched by exact number of firings. I also found that annealing could leave a hard "glaze" on the neck that dry tumbling didn't remove. Could be the difference in concentration but when I apply the the lube with a foam q-tip and swipe it around the inside of the neck a for a few rotations I get a thin uniform coating that doesn't seem to flake. Could be because I'm starting from a clean neck? There's just so many variables at the end of the day! Cheers.
This answers allot of questions I have had! Thanks Sir!!
Hello Bryan, i think that Lou Murdica mentioned it, but N133 needs or at least, likes High(er) Neck Tension. So if you did use N133, that could be what you saw on the Targets
Thanks Bryan, another great video. Did you use an expander ball, mandrel or just a bushing when you sized the necks?
Bushing on turned necks.
Sometimes I think it would be interesting to repeat such tests. Polishing inner case necks and consequent results might be interesting too.
You should try brushing with a bronze brush vs nylon cause I use bronze and lube after
A question Bryan: Do you think that cleaning brass in corn cobb prior to annealing (with the Amp machine) accomplishes the same effect as brushing the necks prior to annealing?
I really do not know but you could test this by comparing precision with corn cobb cleaning vs. brush. I’ll add this to my list of potential follow up tests.
@@WitchDoctorPrecision Without the Amp press, I doubt that I could generate believable results. Thanks Bryan
@@palmersasscer7462 gotcha. I have this on the list to test. Coming soon!
@@palmersasscer7462 I just checked into this. I used my standard corn Cobb media with polish. It turns out that the brushed only brass (15 pieces) showed overall higher seating pressures relative to the 15 pieces of corn cobb cleaned (not brushed) brass. I think the polish in the corn cobb adds some lubrication to the inside of the neck which is why it seated with less pressure. I will head to the range soon and shoot all of these and see if there is any effects on precision. I will make a video on this after all the shooting is done. Thanks for inspiring a test.
How would moly coating change this?
Were the cases trimmed, chamfer, and deburred before or after or at all?
They were trimmed, chamfered, and deburred before the test. I test as if I was going into a match so everything is in order for the tests.
Bryan, I have a question for you. I'm assuming you don't clean the inside of your cases. Are you concerned about getting to much carbon building up inside the case that could cause case complicity change?
I’ve never had an issue with case capacity. I’ve shot many cartridges and powders and don’t seem to have ever had that issue. I have loaded very stout at times too and fired some brass over 80 times. I do use a 12 inch drop tube on most applications so maybe case capacity decreases after several firings but I’ve never had an issue with getting all the powder I want in a case. Have you had this issue?
@@WitchDoctorPrecision I'm fairly new to reloading. I have changed my process a few times in the last couple of years. I started off dry media tumbling then moved to wet tumbling with stainless steel, and now I just wet tumble without media. I do shot bolt and semi auto and those cases get pretty dirty. My learning curve comes with a lot of questions. I have tried lubricating the inside of the necks, I used what I have, hornady case lube and did see a huge reduction in seating pressure. With your latest video, I'm going to use this procedure on all my reloading.
What lubricant was used?
Neolube 2
Amp had a video showing variations as carbon build up after every firing..so..it's a variable to leave hardened carbon in neck ...I think....
Bryan, Before you lube the bullets with Neolube 2 do you remove and factory coating from the bullets? I have experimented with removing the coating from Berger bullets with solvent drying them and then using a vibratory cleaner with Flitz case cleaner added.
I then tumble the bullets in paper towel pieces to remove any major residual coating.
These bullets usually seat with 30 to 35 psi seating pressure and shoot well.
I am following all of your videos ( great info ) and was wondering if you had thought about the factory coating.
No, I haven’t. Most of the time I use hand swaged bullets so they come out very clean. I will consider this for factory made bullets. Have you seen any difference in cleaning factory made or not?
@@WitchDoctorPrecision
Yes I have seen a difference the groups are better. I am going try to remove factory coating from the bullets andthe
Sorry hit the wrong key.
I am going to clean bullets and use the Neolube in cases and on bullets and see what happens.
@@larryrupert3563 cool, hope it goes well. Data suggest that it should but individual results may vary.