Neck Lube, or: Do I need it?

[Alpha1]

You don't need to expand your necks. I use bushing dies they don't have a expander ball and they work fine.
When you run your case into the full length die on the up stroke it sizes the case back to original dimensions. It squeezes the neck back to its original shape. On the down stroke it drags your case over the expander ball and opens up the case mouth again. That's when you get problems dragging it over the expander ball. I had a reding .303 full length die that you needed arms like popeye to drag the case over the expander. Failing that just dip the neck in powdered graphite. But you should not need to lube inside case mouths.

[rox]

You don't need to expand your necks. I use bushing dies they don't have a expander ball and they work fine.

They work fine because you can choose the bushing size to give the neck ID you want for a given brass thickness. A fixed full-length die that is designed to have an expander will necessarily reduce the neck below the desired size (and assuming thinnest brass) in the expectation that it will be subsequently expanded to the correct ID. Simply removing the expander could leave the neck ID much smaller than you want, especially if your brass is thicker than minimum.

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