Adventures with lead

[CarRacer]

I picked up some lead bullets from Gun Stop this weekend and put a few together last night. I knew I had to increase the belling on the cases but evidently I didn't know how far I would have to go. I pooched up my first few cases, so I'll have to take them apart and recover the pieces and toss the bullet. I had my best results by flaring the case until I could seat a bullet almost to the lube ring. I also stopped seating and crimping in the same step. I never had any issues with plated bullets doing that but not so with lead. I was also careful to apply the least amount of crimp required to get the case to drop into the barrel freely. I was worried about resizing the bullet while removing the bell. Overall, it was a fun learning experience and I like to keep slowly expanding my reloading skills.

The rejects.






A couple of good finished products.

[Seismic Sam]

I think you went from too little to extra too much. You want to keep gradually screwing the expander stem into the die in no more than 1/8th turn increments until the bottom 20 mils of the cast bullet reliably fits in the case mouth. If you expand so that the bullet drops into the case up to the lube groove, you have gone way too far and also set yourself up for a potential problem or two. Any load, be it auto pistol, revolver, or rifle depends on the walls of the case gripping the entire surface of the bullet in the case firmly. Now, if you have flared the case so that there is no grip on the bullet below the lube groove and then crimped it in place, it may look OK but in reality the bullet may not be firmly held in place.

The result could be a variety of nasty things. The bullet could jump forward on ignition, get stuck in the grooves, and then when the main powder load reached maximum pressure the case or the gun could blow. This situation might also cause a squib where there was a definite bang but the bullet didn't clear the barrel, and then you are dead meat on the next shot. In an autoloader, a poor grip on the bullet means the bullet will get pushed back in the case when feeding, which can also cause high pressure. Less dangerous is that a poor grip on revolver bullets can make them move forward out of the case with a heavy recoil load, and this can cause the gun to jam. For revolver bullets with a crimping cannelure, you CAN seat and crimp at the same time, but the whole die (both body and seating stem) have to be dead nuts set perfect TOGETHER. I've described this procedure several times, and you can look for it in some of my older posts. (Sorry, but I'm not going to repeat the 5 or 6 step process for doing this every time somebody new comes in here.

So: Back that belling stem out of the die until the case will only take the bottom 20 mils or so of the bullet and lock it in place. Then set up your seating die (this will take at least three tries to get it right...) perfect and you should be fine. DO NOT fire any of those rounds that you expanded until the bullet went in up to the lube groove!!

[CarRacer]

Thanks for responding Sam.

I may have not described how far the bullet sat in the case prior to seating the best but I'll pull a few bullets and measure them before doing anything else. These bullets had a bevel at the base and weren't dropping in all the way to the lube groove but I'll measure to double check the .02".

I have seen a few of your old "tips and tricks" post when I delved through all of the old posts in this section a couple weeks ago, they're very helpful. I did set the die as prescribed in the instructions, but I'm glad I asked to double check, maybe I missed something. You guys aren't to be relied upon but that doesn't mean you can't be helpful.

I'll report back later with what I find out.

[CarRacer]

Here's what I found out. The case on the left is the previous bell setting and the case on the right is what I came up with today. I still think the one on the right needs more bell as I still saw a sliver of lead on 2 of the 4 dummy rounds I just put together. I'm afraid that if I bell anymore though I'm back to where I started and have gone past the ideal .02".

Your thoughts?

[crbutler]

My experience is that excessive belling and the crimping just gives you shorter case life, not that it will cause much trouble with the reloading process.

You already touched on the fact that trying to seat and crimp at the same time are not all that compatible with some lead bullets.

If your second try is still shaving lead ( the one on the left) it probably is that the bullets are not staying straight in your seating die, and you shave a bit as it tilts. The seating die stem needs to fit the bullet right to avoid that, and the shellholder and case need to be centered to the same point otherwise this can happen. Also, I will have problems like that with the die getting dirty after a few rather heavily lubed bullets, so that may be an issue also.

Generally I have not been able to fully correct the issue for more than 10 or so rounds at a time without heavy belling. If I am loading mostly lead bullets I will set the press up for lots of belling.

It is kind of sacrilegious to say it here, but I just will wipe the case/bullet junction on lead reloads with a cloth, and get rid of the lead shavings that way, and the rounds are plenty more accurate than I am when using a handgun. If you decide to do rifle cast loads, not getting everything dialed in can cause some serious accuracy loss and leading, but with handguns, its not an issue to me.

[EJSG19]

Frankly, with lead bullets (I load mostly Missouri Bullets) I tend to think that shaving a bit of lead is better than belling the case too much.

If you take a look at your size case, when loaded with a lead projectile, you can visually see the bulge in the case where the bullet occupies the brass. This helps create neck tension I would assume (I defer to SS as always, talk about knowledge comparison... like comparing a ford pinto to a Ferrari...) so honestly if you shave 0.003'' off your projectile but still have a good neck tension and crimp, I don't believe you are going to see any noticeable difference in your ammunition's performance on the range. Better to dial your press in so this doesn't happen, but as crbutler suggests, I think some of this is caused by the bullet not being perfectly vertical as it's seated into the case by the press.

All things being relative, we are loading cheap pistol ammo when we load lead (at least I am), no matter how I set my Dillon 550 to bell the case, without fail I will find a round here and there (maybe 1-2%) that have lead shaved off. No big deal, take your finger, remove the lead shaving, life goes on. This, assuming you've not got any of the trouble that SS mentions. But, keep in mind, I say this based on the scenario of what I do. I load bare lead to the light side of any manual recommended charge. So any trouble discussed in this thread that might occur is somewhat mitigated by that.

Besides, if I wanted to push the envelope, bare lead is not what I'd choose to do it with.

[Seismic Sam]

The other option, which isn't very expensive, is to back off the seating die body so it doesn't crimp, use the right seating stem to fit the bullet as crbutler mentions, and then buy a Lee factory crimp die. It gives you a good crimp and it's finger adjustable without having to unlock any locking nuts, and it has a carbide size ring in the bottom to iron out the whole case after it's loaded.

[CarRacer]

I think the ones I shaved lead on weren't placed completely vertical by me when I went to seat them. I guess I was spoiled by jacketed bullets and the margin of error they give when placing a bullet. I am using the round nose seating stem so I don't think that's the issue. I guess I'll just have to concentrate on getting the bullet orientated better before running it into the die. I also started to rub each round down with a rag before placing it in the final box. It cleans any errant lube up on the case and allowed for a final visual check. I didn't notice a ton of lube build up in the die but there was a slight film in there. A cotton rag wrapped around a pen gave me a tight fit and made clean up a breeze.

Fast, cheap, quality. The old saying that you can pick two sure seems to apply here. I'll slow down my bullet placement with the current bell setting and try those.

[Rodentman]

I find that the FCD can deform the lead bullet, decreasing the diameter and thus potentially inducing a cause for leading. I personally try to avoid FCD with lead bullets, In fact, if the bullet is .002 over the jacket bullet size the round often won't even enter the FCD. Usually at +.001 it will. But I'm just an amatoor at this.

[Snowgun]

I find that the FCD can deform the lead bullet, decreasing the diameter and thus potentially inducing a cause for leading. I personally try to avoid FCD with lead bullets, In fact, if the bullet is .002 over the jacket bullet size the round often won't even enter the FCD. Usually at +.001 it will. But I'm just an amatoor at this.

Someone told me this the other day as well...I currently use a fcd on my 9mm with little to no crimp on fmj's. I want to try the poly/moly coated bayou bullets, but don't want to seat and crimp same step, does anyone have experience with fcd on these types of bullets?

[Rodentman]

I can't answer that specifically but I don't use an FCD when it resizes the bullet, and I see that only with lead. I have enough (non lee-mostly Redding) diesets with separate crimping dies so I avoid the FCD when I want to.