Reloading 303 with crimp

You can also get undersize or oversize mandrels from Lee. The more times you resize cases without annealing, the more springback the brass has and you gradually loose neck tension. The best way to deal with this is to anneal on every reload, but that is a bit of a pain (although, that’s what I now do).  So it’s handy to have a -.001 mandrel available if you find neck tension is fading (that’s much better than crimping in my opinion). 

But I full sized some more of my once fired brass (first fired in someone else’s gun) using the smaller.310 expander I mentioned a couple posts above. The neck was tighter than before but with two of the rounds, there was still some slight movement at the cannelure. The projectiles were .311 ppu fmj-bt with cannelure. I ended up running them through the neck die too. 

So I’m thinking I’ll chuck the expander in my drill and hone it a little with some maybe 1000 grit sandpaper. 

Or, will a Lee .308 expander from a Lee 30-06 or .308 win die work in the 303 die? 

Edit:

Lee se2169 is the expander Im thinking of.

Per lee's website it is the same length as the se2358, which is currently in my 303 Brit. full length die.  Both the se2169 and se2358 are alternates for 7.62x54r. The se2169 lists it as an expander for 7.5x54mas, 308 win, 300 savage, 30.40 krag, 7.62x54R and 300wsm.  So, I'm going to give one of those a try.

My Lee collet neck sizing die is fine. It’s the full length sizing die that is the issue, same for the op.

I do utilize the 180 deg turn when I use the collet neck die. 

They seemed tight until the bullet is almost to the top of the cannelure groove. With this smaller expander only 1 or 2 got loose whereas with the other expander all of them were loose. It’s not much trouble additionally running them through the neck die. But hopefully the 308 expander will fix the problem.  I’ll be building an Annealer soon.