I lube, especially nickel plated cases.
I have found that the nickel can gall onto the carbide and start scratching the cases.
If needed, I run a tight patch with some JB or lead cloth using a drill into the carbide ring(s) to get the fouling off.
I have to say, this is very timely. I'll give a little background to my situation...
I stainless tumble cases. I like how clean they get, but they are tight to resize because they are squeaky clean. Similarly, they tend to tarnish a bit over time because they have nothing protecting them. But I don't want to add hassle to the routine, like another tumbling in wax-impregnated media or something. Anyway, I had some automotive wax-as-you-dry stuff and figured I'd spray that on the sides (Meguiar's NXT if you are interested). I then rolled them around a lot in a towel and left them to dry.
They didn't seem overly slick when I went to resize them, but whatever. I started with nickel .38 Special cases. The first two were kinda normalish, the third took more effort. I thought maybe it was just oversized or something. By the fourth case, it was super hard to resize. It came out of the die covered in linear/vertical scratches. The die itself clearly has some stuff stuck on it. I tried a .375 bore brush with brake cleaner to no avail. I was thinking of trying steel wool next.
What is "JB"? A lead remover cloth sounds great, except I don't have one. I could pick one up though and give that a try. It's a Lee die so it's not like there is a ton of money tied up in it, but it would be nice to fix it.
Needless to say I'll be re-tumbling the cases before continuing with them... I think the idea isn't terrible, maybe a carnauba-based wax product would work better than a polymer one.
Yes, it is easy with carbide dies.No you don't need it.
