Printable View
I have some nive commercially manufactured 230gr RNL bullets with a hollow base that are .453 in diameter. I have resized the .45 ACP brass and belled the mouth, but the bullet seater does not want to heat them. It begins shaving a portion of the lead as I attempt to seat them
The same thing happens with the 45/70 with .458 commercially cast bullets, but not as bad.
Is there a trick to seating them correctly? Could I be going something wrong?
Thanks for any advice.
I suspect you just need to bell them a bit more. Hard to say without seeing it. Try a bit greater bell.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Top illustration, Parashooter.
For a couple of reasons, excessive "belling" is a bad idea.
1. It over-works the brass and the stuff splits WAY before its time.
2. Too big a "bell" makes it hard to shove the case into the seating die.
A little "experimentation" before going mad with a big batch will save a LOT of unseemly language.
I tend to bell a tad on the excessive side to compensate for different case lengths. I also set the bell per batch because I got tired of finding I forgot the last batch where lead and this batch are plated bullets and the bell is so wide there's no tension or vise versa.
Thanks all, excellent advice. I increased the belling slightly. The cast bullets now seat initially about 1/16" in the mouth. Lead shaving is completely eliminated.
Lyman "M" die with the stepped expander has been my default for years, esp. with cast bullets. Have noted the same concept incorporated in some of the newer RCBS dies and maybe Redding. I've modified quite a few more expanders to do the same thing.
Have had the same problem with cases shaving off some of the excess lead from the bullet. The bullets are cast from a Hensold mold, made to exact castings of the barrel. So I don´t want to re-size, which would achieve a slimmer calibre. But sized bullets do look a look neater.