man oh man, thank you all for the great comments. Lot's to unpack, but I got what I was looking for. Which is that variable to work on first, and that looks like revisiting
bullet size and not worrying about hardness any longer. Not sure if I mentioned it, this is my first project with powder coating. So telltale signs might not be obvious to me with PC issues.
I should say, the rounds did all chamber and eject just fine. I ran at least a dozen, probably close to 20 rounds from a magazine while at the range. Manually operating the bolt both from the charge handle and letting the bolt slam home. No major feeding marks and no PC peeling. I went through this step because at first, I had two coats of PC on my bullets, and well ... as you can guess, those suckers did not chamber well at all. Ejecting the round left the bullet in the throat!
I'm going to run a test of my best powder charge/accuracy to date and try a combination the sizing and PC combinations.
Meaning:
Gas check and size @ 225 -> PC and Ice Quench - Final resize at 225 - Using a 0.226/0.222 expander neck plug
Gas check and size @ 225 -> PC and Ice Quench - Final resize at 225 - Using a 0.228/0.224 expander neck plug
Gas check and size @ 226 -> PC and Ice Quench - Final resize at 226 - Using a 0.226/0.222 expander neck plug
Gas check and size @ 226 -> PC and Ice Quench - Final resize at 226 - Using a 0.228/0.224 expander neck plug
Gas check and size @ 225 -> PC and Ice Quench - No final resize - Using a 0.226/0.222 expander neck plug
Gas check and size @ 225 -> PC and Ice Quench - No final resize - Using a 0.228/0.224 expander neck plug
Gas check and size @ 226 -> PC and Ice Quench - No final resize (which is what I have been doing, but will keep it as a control group) Using a 0.226/0.222 expander neck plug
(PC @400* -22Mins)
All necks are annealed, shoulder bumped 0.002 using a FL resizing die, then expanded using the expander plug detailed above
Ian, thank you for the lengthy post. I have those ideas written down for future testing.
Let's talk neck expanders a second though. I'm a little confused as to why the Lee expander with an NOE plug would give a different result as an RCBS expander. (I'm not good at engineering, so the difference may be obvious to some). If I were starting off with neck expanders, I would jump right into the RCBS die, but I have a bunch of the NOE plugs and want to understand more before deciding to change over.
Here is the NOE expander that goes into the lee die:
For those not aware, the NOE plug has two diameters. The first, smaller diameter is for expanding the full case neck and the second for expanding the case mouth. Now, I'm not trying to defend the NOE plug, just trying to figure out what would make it ineffective. Both the 226/222 and the 228/226 plug is long enough that it will expand the full length of the case neck.
From what I can tell, the RCBS is similar except the portion that expands the case mouth is variable. This portion of the RCBS expander seems to work similar to the Lee Universal Expander.
Again, for those who think the RCBS is superior, I have no qualms with that, but trying to figure out if I need to re-invest in different tools or if the accuracy gain in that re-investment is going to be minimal.
I'm sure I have not touched on a bunch of other points that have been covered here. As always I'm reading and re-reading these posts as I come up with testing plans. I really do appreciate everyone's feedback.