While sorting through a small container of .223 brass that has been buggered up too much to use again for .223 reloads I got the idea I would try out a set of .300 whisper dies that I got for a good price not long ago. .300 whisper is the .221 fireball blown out to 30 caliber if I remember correctly and therefore much shorter than .223 Rem. Long story short I did not use enough lube on a particular brand of brass that tends to have a soft case head and rims are easily stripped off. The die set was a RCBS set where the decap assembly and expander ball goes out the bottom of the die. SOOO if you have a stuck case in the die...you can't take out the stem to use a stuck case remover. Esp if the expander ball is somewhat stuck in the neck of the case that is in the die. So my lathe to the rescue I turned the case head off as it was sticking out of the die still (duh?)
The next thing was to sort of bore out the last bit of case head so the stem could be removed all the way out the front of the die ( my dad pointed the fact I could remove the stem out after opening the hole up to 30cal but I was worried about wall thickness for my threads). After doing this a standard stuck case remover can't be used because I have successfully removed all the material it would have used to remove the case.
Next using the lathe I took the largest tap I could find and threaded the case that still resided in the die. You only need about 3 full threads and a bolt that is the right size for this.
After that I tossed the whole shebang, bolt threaded into the brass and the die into the freezer. HA I did learn something in physics. After about 20minutes or whatever we put the die in a rubber jawed vise and with a brass rod gently tapped from above. After a few taps the bolt pulled the brass out with it and I cleaned the die and checked for any damage.
Lesson learned....USE enough lube...I've had this problem more than not lately.
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