First .380 loads, couple of split cases?

[joelh]

Just did a test load of .380 98 grn. lrn with 3.2 grns of Universal Clays. The manual gave a start load of 3.1 and a max of 3.6 for a 95 grn jacketed, so I thought I was pretty light.

I loaded and shot 12 and of those, 2 cases has splits from the mouth down about 1/2 way.

The loads shot well and cycled fine. The one thing I noticed while loading was that the seating die left more crimp that I had used on other calibers. The dies were a lee carbide 3 die set.

Should I back down the powder a couple of tenths and try again?

I am a pretty new reloader with only about 1000 rounds of 9mm and .45 under my belt, so these slipt cases kind of freaked me out a bit.

 

[MtnCreek]

Where did you get the brass? It's a brass or brass processing issue.

 

[Gigs]

You don't really need any crimp, just remove the belling.

 

[BADUNAME37]

It could be a number of things. Since the .380 ACP headspaces on the case mouth, if the cases are a bit too long, I would think wedging could occur, the same if you crimp way too much, part of the case (the mouth, or opening where you place the bullet) may be going past the ridge where the chamber ends and the barrel starts.

Take your barrel out of your gun.
Drop one of these problem loads into the barrel. It should stop, the base of the cartridge being flush with the rear of the chamber.

Push on it with your thumb to force it a bit into the barrel (chamber).
Remove it from the barrel, it should simply drop out. If you need to poke it back out - that is a bad thing!

Look at the case mouth. If you see rifling marks down a bit from the very edge of the case mouth, you are crimping way too tightly. When the cartridge is thusly chambered, and when you fire, the wedge effect is spiking pressures! You could easily blow the gun this way, be careful!

 

[joelh]

The brass is range pickup. The 2 that split are both federal cases. Most of the brass was WWB that I had shot, but the Federals were just picked up. They were all tumbled for a couple of hours. The splits extended down to the base of the bullet and then stopped.

I suspect over crimping. How do I correct this with a 3 die set. All of my other sets have a 4th crimping die that is pretty easily adjustable, but this one is a seating and crimping die and the only adjustment seems to be to set the bullet depth.

 

[Gigs]

You need to back the die body out and reset the seating depth.

Back the die out and adjust for the crimp first. You really just need to remove the belling on something like a 380, you don't need a visible "crimp".

Once the crimp is set then take a loaded cartridge with the correct OAL and turn the seating post down until it just touches the bullet. You might need to fine tune OAL from there but that should get you really close.

 

[rcmodel]

You adjust the amount of crimp by screwing the seating die body in, or out, and locking the lock ring.

Then adjust the seating stem for proper seating depth.

Use your dial calipers to measure the case mouth after crimping.
Your .380 rounds should measure in the vicinity of .371" MIN, to .373" MAX at the case mouth when properly taper crimped.

Your brass split because it was bad brass, nothing more.
It's possible your gun has an over-size chamber, and the brass just couldn't be rezized and expanded that much without splitting.

rc

 

[MtnCreek]

Re-set the seat/crimp die. Place a sized, belled case in the shellholder, screw in the die until it touches the case and lock the die down. The die should have an adjustment on top fior seating depth, back that out several turns. Insert projectile and seat. Once you have proper depth, back out the seating adjustment several turns and un-lock the die. Screw in die slowly (0.5 turns or so) and raise ram, keep doing this until the bell is removed and will pass the chamber test Friendly described above. Then place it back in the press and lower the seating adjustment until it touches the projectile.

 

[joelh]

Thanks guys, I felt like that was the correct adjustment for crimping but was not sure. Crimping seems to be the most nuanced part of reloading.

 

[joelh]

Re-adjusted the die as per instructed (Thanks!) and loaded another test batch. These shot and ejected fine and the brass showed no signs of stress. Thank you all for you help.

I am shooting these in a LCP and they felt plenty hot, I am back down to the min. charge for the next batch.

 

[BADUNAME37]

I have an LCP, excellent little gun!

If you remove the barrel, and drop a round into the barrel (chamber), you will see a U-shaped area where the feed ramp is located where the base of the cartridge remains unsupported (on the very bottom with the gun in the shooting position).

**This is the area to keep an eye on when looking at your fired cases!**

If there is much bulge right at that unsupported U-shape area, back your load down a bit. You can see a tiny bulge, just not so apparent that it sticks right out at you! If you try to push loads, that is one of the first places the case will give-way, causing powder and hot propellant shooting downwards toward the composite frame, I believe.

This is something you do NOT want to happen!

 

[GaryL]

You just never know with range pickups. They could have been on their last legs and left by the previous reloader for that reason.

BTW, there was some Chinese Norinco sold back in the 90's that split practically every case the first time fired. Bad brass is always a possibility. Federal is usually pretty good though.

 

[kingmt]

What Friendly said sounds like my TCP. You have to be careful with those things. My wife bought a TCP about a year after I did & while the chamber is still unsupported hers does met the web of the cartridge. The ramp on mine is well past the web & very easy to pop cases. I sometimes have problems with factory loads.