You bring up some good points. I believe that unless the case is perfect and the bullet set straight on the case mouth, you will wind up with a percentage of cases that are bulged to the point of causing feeding problems. I just loaded another batch of rounds varying C.O.L. without eliminating the occasional oversize case bulge problem. The loaded cartridge case measurements for cases that will fit in the loaded cartridge die are .380" at the case mouth, .390" at the web and .382" were the bulge is most prominent. The measurements for cartridges that fail are .384" at the prominent part of the bulge and the same for the mouth and web.
I am not going to spend the time you do on 9mm pistol case prep. If I find the lead bullets I recently bought are match accurate at 50 yards, I will buy a seating die that fully supports the case before the bullet begins to fully seat. Some people suggest the Redding Competition Seating Die to prevent the alignment problem. It is expensive, but will save a lot of time and aggravation.
If you find something that works through experimentation, don’t hesitate to share it with us so we can discuss whether or not it works for us as well.
I could kick myself for not remembering this earlier.
Back in 1995 I was unable to purchase bulk quantities of lead pistol bullets from one supplier, so I switched to another. The new supplier had bullets with a softer lead compound, so I had to decrease the amount of crimp to prevent deforming the bullet. With the harder cast bullets I loaded with a .002" crimp. The formula for the crimp was Bullet Diameter + 2 x Brass Thickness - .004". The diameter of the coated lead bullet I am currently loading is .356" and the thickest brass I am using is Win +P+ brass @ .012". Plugging in the numbers, .356" + .024" - .004" gives me .376".
Today I screwed in the crimping die on my RL550B until the case mouth measured .377" and ran all the problem cartridges through the last stage again. All the problem cartridges passed the gauge test. The crimp die was screwed in .027" closer to the shell plate to get the correct crimp. It appears that was enough for the crimp die to bump the bulge on the case where the base of the bullet lies. Problem solved !!!
I would not adjust more crimp at maximum powder charge weight, because tighter crimp will cause an increase in chamber pressure. If you try more crimp, please make sure you are at the middle or minimum suggested charge weight for your load. Also bear in mind that the 9mm is very sensitive to changes in crimp and it will affect accuracy.
T2C, thats what i meant when i said the lee FCD crimp die has a carbide ring in it.
Some like it , some hate it. But it will size that bulge down so the round will pass a wilson chamber gauge,thats probably why i didnt have feed problems. Iam sure you knew about the lee FCD carbide ring though.
But since i was useing berrys bullets,i though when it was resizeing in the crimp die that it was also pushing the bullet in on the side , deforming it. Thus screwing the accuracy up.
I would also like a seating die that did a better job of aligning the bullet.i might upgrade when i get some more experience. It takes me forever to load a box of rounds,but iam trying to remove all variables so when somethings off i can track the problem. The berry bullets, like lead throw even more challenges than fmj.
But the price is right compared to hornady fmj rn for learning and shooting paper. I wanted to do some experiments today to see if i could figure out what helped remove the case bulge, but with 5 inches of rain in 2 hours and being surrounded by one tornado after another all day i couldnt. Thank god the powers back on.
Bastrop tx has been through hell in the last 4 years.
PS, when i say something i did helped remove the case bulge iam not talking about smashing it in with the carbide ring on the FCD. Just to be clear. Iam just saying thats probably why they passed the chamber gauge. Mine also looked really bad on one side, yet the other side was perfect. Now i take the time to make sure each bullet is straight before seating,this also eats up a bunch of time.
Thanks for the formula. I’ll check the problem rounds against that. The Dillon seat die is pretty tight on the case. Is the Redding CSD tighter than that? The $$ is not a big deal if it actually will solve the issue. I just didn’t want to buy the die and still have problems because that fix was not the correct one. The bullets are very popular so I figured they would be that way if they caused problems.
I’ll check the dimensions of the crimp. How do you correct for mixed brass in that formula?
I measured several cases and found the wall thickness ran from 0.010" to 0.012". I used the thickest case for the formula, so I would not over-crimp the bullet and varied the crimp in increments of 0.001" until I found the most accurate crimp.
When I load match ammunition for 50 yards, I separate cases by head stamp. When I was really serious about PPC shooting back in the day, I would keep 1,000 once fired brass from new ammunition I fired through my match gun and use it until I had to scrap the batch. Then I would start with another batch of 1,000.
Lead bullets and especially swaged ones are easily reduced in diameter during seating if the expander was under size for the bullet. A crimp that would or almost deform the bullet is excessive. In this instance, crimping is being used to reduce the case’s outside diameter so that the round will chamber. The die’s crimp feature is accomplishing what a Lee carbide factory crimp die does–squeeze the case down to factory specs. Unfortunately, this action usually degrades lead bullet accuracy.
I don’t think that crimp strength can form enough bullet pull to increase pressure to unsafe limits.
I gave an opinion in this post, and I mean no disrespect to T2C who very obviously is an advanced reloader. Hell! I might be wrong.
I agree with you. I believe that too much crimp will deform a soft bullet and have an adverse affect on accuracy. When I was able to buy Bull-X bullets, I set the crimp die to give a .377" reading at the case mouth and was able to get great accuracy at 50 yards. When Bull-X went out of business and I switched to a softer bullet, I had to set the crimp for a case mouth reading of .380" to obtain nearly the same accuracy.
As far as too much crimp causing overpressure at maximum loads, I experimented with it quite a bit. At loads weighing in the middle of the suggested range I loaded 20 rounds at little or no crimp, 20 rounds at .002" crimp and 20 rounds at .004" crimp for testing. The same powder charge and tighter crimp gave me higher muzzle velocities and the brass showed signs of higher pressure.
Too bad Bull-X went out of business. They made a great bullet and gave me a significant discount for bullet orders of 50,000 or more.
Without starting a new thread and since were talking about crimp.
When a round is over crimped badly,what does it couse accuracy wise? Flyers left and right?up and down?
Or just degrade accuracy at long distance,say 25 yrds?? Iam sure its worse with plated bullets like berrys rather than a standered fmj such as a hornady fmj rn. In short what does it couse the round to do?
I’ll have to measure the crimps on the good rounds but I think I’m getting about .003-.004" of crimp. These are good hard bullets so I don’t think deformation of the bullet is an issue. One thing about the Dillon seating stem…
The narrow cone of the bullet bottoms out on the nose on the SWC side. I may throw it on the mill and deepen it so it contacts the sides of the cone only. While I don’t that that’s the sole cause but I do think it will definitely assist in alignment.
Sparky, pull a bullet and check and see how bad its deforming or how bad the crimp ring is,then you will know for sure. I dont see how mashing the bump in isnt going to not deform the lead bullet.
It would be worth a try. The bullets I am currently experimenting with are coated S&S Casting 9mm 147g FP with a rounded profile behind the flat point. I found that the round nose side of the seating stem works better than the flat point side for me, because of the bullet profile. I think the flat point side of the stem is better suited for seating bullets like a truncated bullet.
I’ll check on that. These are TC style but the nose us getting a ring from stem even though they are wearing straight otherwise. I tried the RN side and it was FUBAR. That’s why I thought milling it deeper so the sides did the work might be better.
Talked to the bullet maker and he suggested a Double Alpha powder funnel as well as the Redding CSD. Which brings me to the question of COAL.
Anyone have any favorite length for a G17? What feels/feeds best? I’ll be adjusting the barrel throat any way since my barrel is known to be too tight for lead bullets anyway.
I’ve since learned that the Lone Wolf barrels that I’m using have the tightest throat of any aftermarket barrel on the market. It was also recommended that I invest in Double Alpha’s Mr. Bullet Feeder powder funnel because of the expander design.
So the parts/tools so far have been:
Redding CSD
Double Alpha powder funnel
Manson 9mm integral piloted throating reamer
I’ll update y’all once everything has come together to produce the end product. Thanks again!