I picked up a Bullberry barrel in .17 ackley bee. It came with 100 something brass pre-fireformed. After firing these brass for a little over two years now. I am starting to split necks. Time to retire the brass.
I've purchased some new .218 bee brass (new) I tried to size slowley with the FL die. I know it would be best if I had the 2 forming dies to make the brass form correctly. BUT, with lack of funds at current time. I am wondering. I'll get back to the wondering in a moment.
I've sized brass down from 30.06 to 25.06 in one fell swoop, no problems - no annealing. Lubed and go. Those worked great.
I tried to size from .218 to .17 in one swoop. NOPE! crushed them. tried lubed, stll crushed them, annealed them -still crushed them.
This is where the wondering is coming in. With the lack of funds to purchase the 2 forming dies, (almost $200). I've got to looking at getting a set of dies for a 20 vartarg (under $40)- .204 (under $35), something in the .20 caliber area.
I would have to cut the die to accommodate the lenght of the .218 bee case. Then I would be able to take the current FL die for 17 ackley bee and size it to where I need it.
I have not done all my research on this for neck angle and so forth. I don't want to have excessive headspace that would perhaps give me troubles with the fireforming.
penny for your thoughts.

i haven't had any trouble forming this round at all, try running them into the seating die first (pull out the bullet seating plug) thats an old trick but it usually works cause it doesn't squeeze the case as much as the sizing die

Butch Lambert (Shadetree Engineering), who is a regular on this site, makes a great bushing style form die set.)

quote:

Originally posted by mydogtwig:
I picked up a Bullberry barrel in .17 ackley bee. It came with 100 something brass pre-fireformed. After firing these brass for a little over two years now. I am starting to split necks.

You need to aneal your formed brass. I use to have a .17 Bee and I was advised by the barrel maker to "BE SURE" to aneal your brass after forming. This will prevent them from neck-splits.