Monday notes

We celebrated second son's birthday tonight. He's 27 years old and we went to Sammy's restaurant in Alexandria for steaks. Sammy's is one of the best kept secrets in Alexandria. The ribeye is excellent. I keep thinking I'm going to order the prime rib, but the ribeye always gets the nod. Next time I'm at Sammy's, I'll try the prime rib.

When we got home, I prepped the brass that I fired this weekend. I have fifty rounds of .30-06 and 50 rounds of .30-30 ready to load. As much as I like reloading, I absolutely abhor prepping brass. I notice that the new Lee Classic Cast press resizes brass a whole lot easier than the old Challenger press.

While resizing .30-30, I noticed that the shoulders were coming out with what looked like lube bumps. If you use too much lube, it seems to collect at the shoulder and dents the brass. This isn't a big problem with .30-30 as the case headspaces on the rim, but with other brass that headspace on the shoulder, dents in the shoulder might be a problem. In this case, I took the die apart. A couple of years of crud had collected in the sizing die. A quick cleaning and the brass sized properly. All reloaders should clean their dies occasionally. Squirt a little carb cleaner in the sizing chamber and run a rag through it. The crud comes out easily. Take a minute and wipe off the decapping pin, reassemble the die, and you're done.

Those few cases with dents will shoot just fine. I'm not loading max loads and the brass will blow out under pressure to fill the chamber and the dents will go away.

Now, however, it's bedtime. I've got a 14 hour day tomorrow and five a.m. will come quickly enough.