Seperate seat and crimp dies

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Reese-Mo
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Seperate seat and crimp dies

Post by Reese-Mo »

Just a heads up... I noticed that my cast bullet 45acp loads were having a hard time chambering. Fast forward and a bit of sleuthing, and what I discovered is that with _some_ brass the taper crimp is interfering with the seating. Not so much a problem with case length, but wall thickness.

Also discovered that if I seat with no taper crimp, then totally readjust the die to crimp with no bullet movement in the case, things are perfecto every time. Dunno if that's good new or bad, but.... I spent the extra $25 for another taper crimp/seat die and will set one up as seat only, and the other as crimp only.

Passin' that thru, and open to other suggestions!
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Re: Seperate seat and crimp dies

Post by Archer »

That's the way I've been doing it for some 25 years.
One of the attractions of the Lee sets is they come with the extra die in the set.
Of course I tend to like the Lyman M expander which means there's still an extra die to add to the set.
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Re: Seperate seat and crimp dies

Post by runfiverun »

always do each step separate..
except on the progressives... sometimes.
sometimes I only seat about 95% of the way and then finish pushing the bullet in place while applying the final crimp.
and sometimes I seat and crimp, and then apply a different type of crimp.
for instance I seat and extremely lightly taper crimp some of my 45 acps, and the next die is a roll crimp die which I bump against the trimmed to length case mouths.
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Re: Seperate seat and crimp dies

Post by GasGuzzler »

I seat and iron with the seat die and finish with the 4th die in the set.
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Re: Seperate seat and crimp dies

Post by Ohio3Wheels »

I seat and crimp separately. I have a few sets where I set the seating die up with a washer under the lock ring, seat all the bullets then remove the seating stem and the washer to crimp. Some times I'm too cheap for my own good and haven't acquired the extra die.

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Re: Seperate seat and crimp dies

Post by Reese-Mo »

Jeeze, you're all making me feel pretty darn lame.... ;)

No seriously... when I loaded 45ACP, or any cartridge for that matter, on a commercial scale of 1.5 million rounds per year (give or take), I never had a problem with it. My guys loaded 45's on a big Star machine and could crank 'em out pretty quick, with good consistency - and that was from swept up brass from the range. At home, I loaded my "good ammo" on a Hornady progressive, still just used a three die set.

But, live and learn. Maybe chambers are running tighter these days. Dunno.

All of this started with my Ruger 45acp Vacquero. The throats were abysmally tight. I don't have pin gauges but the caliper said about .445-.446ish. I bought a throat reamer and reamed the throats, but... was still having chambering issues with 45acp cast loads. That got me looking, inspecting real close and that's when I determined that the seat/crimp should be seat, then crimp. Since then, problems don't exist.
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Re: Seperate seat and crimp dies

Post by Gunny268 »

I try to keep it uncomplicated. On my Dillon 550 - for 45 ACP and 9mm (semi-auto stuff) I seat at station 3 and taper crimp on station 4. For revolver loads (45 Colt & 357) I seat on station 3 and fill up a loading tray or two. Then move over (about a foot on the bench) to a Lee Factory Crimp Die set up in my RCBS Rock Chucker.
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Re: Seperate seat and crimp dies

Post by Archer »

When it comes to bottle necked cartridges I still like to have a separate crimp die and split the seating and crimping steps.

Some of the Lee sets come with a factory collet crimp die. Dillon & Redding sell taper crimp dies for at least some rifle calibers and RCBS sells taper crimp seating dies for some calibers that are often available in semi auto calibers. I'm not sure the taper crimp is a real advantage in the bottle necked cartridges over the roll crimp both of them pretty much require the brass to be uniformly trimmed for a consistent crimp.

SOME of the Lee sets include both the collet crimp die AND a neck size die in addition to the standard seater and full length size die. Since I rarely have a single rifle that's in a caliber unique unto it's self I rarely go with the neck size die unless I KNOW the brass came from one of my bolt guns and plan on having loads go back only to that gun.
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Re: Seperate seat and crimp dies

Post by cavelamb »

Life is just so much easier when we seat and crimp separately.

@Reese-Mo
You did really well working out the problem.
Glad you got it fixed.
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