Expander Ball Issues

[divingin]

It seems like the bushing dies are much better than the normal neck sizing dies. Am I right that the bushing dies work the neck a lot less?

Not if you size to the same diameter as your non-bushing die. The advantages of a bushing type neck die (Redding's are called S-type) are that you can adjust the amount of sizing applied to the neck, and adjust the length of the sized portion of the neck (allowing an unsized portion just above the neck/shoulder junction that, theoretically, will help center the cartridge relative to bore.)

Maybe that will fix the high amount of force I need to use in order to pass the expander ball back out of the casing.... Seems like the neck may be getting sized down a little too small, requiring the expander ball to work a bit more.

That is how a die with expander ball is supposed to work. You can see how much expansion takes place by sizing a couple of cases with and without the expander and comparing outside neck diameters. It may be quite a bit, as the die is set up to work with any thickness of brass (i.e. thin brass will need to be sized sufficiently, which means that thicker-walled brass gets sized a little excessively. The expander opens opens them back up to a nominal diameter leaving both usable in the end.) I have no idea on what you'd consider too much though.

You'd likely benefit from using a wax or oil type lube inside the case mouth rather than the dry lube. You may be displacing the dry lube when the expander goes in, causing excessive drag as it comes back up.

And you should clean off any accumulation of brass on the expander; I generally use 800 or 1000 grit wet/dry sandpaper with oil and spin the expander by hand (it shouldn't take much to remove the brass, and you don't want to take steel off the expander, so avoid using a drill or the like.)