I have bought some 404 straight wall and am trying to make it into 404 Jeffrey. I am losing about 50% on the conversion. I am lubing with imperial wax inside and out. I am resising about a third of the way,Rotating the case and relubing and doing another 3rd. Then, relubing, rotating, and then doing the final third. I am irritated at losing this much of the crop of nearly a buck a pop brass. Any suggestions? Thanks

Try using WD40 as your case lube, making sure to get the inside of the case neck lubed as well.

And, I would continue doing what you are doing: go part way into the die, back out, and then rotate the case a bit before preceding.

I have had success using that technique for other cartridges.

Garrett

I suppose we would need to know what sort of failure you are having. What and where is going south along the way?

Ross Seyfried says to anneal before necking up and after necking down.

Is this brass already too soft?

It's not Bertram brass is it?

You're going to end up better off buying Norma stuff to start with if you can't sort this out.

Sell me the rest of your stash of straight walled at a deflated rate so I can make some 450 Vincents!!

To take a guess, I'll bet he got it from Mast.

Can you descibe the faiure mood. I use this case on a couple of my wildcats and haven't had much of a problem. I use these cases on my .358X.404 and my cut down 8mmx.404X2.5". I'm really working the brass much harder than you on the later. I use bell and Norma. Good results so far with each.My E-Mail address is listed on this forum if you want to communicate.With E-Mail I can send you fotos of these cartridges. roger

It fails to my way of thinking in two ways. It wrinkles in the neck area on some and the neck opening splits on some. Little tiny wrinkles I think are maybe going to sort themselves out but some are big nasty looking wrinkles. No name or label on the brass. I got it from another poster on this forum. Could be Mast or Bertram. It is not Norma.