SSN Vet
Member
So I sat down last night to tumble my latest scrounged brass and load up a couple of boxes of .38 special with 148 gr Berry's plated DEWC.
I'm loading 3.8 gr of W231 and seating to ~1.170". This leaves the rounded shoulder of the bullet about .020" +/- proud of the case. I then apply a VERY light roll crimp with the LFCD, which just alightly "wraps" around the begining of the rounded edge of the bullet.
I've loaded up my own once/twice fired Federal cases with this load and it's a fun little target load for my Taurus 689 (.357 mag w/ 6.5" barrel).
I've scored a lot of very nice looking pick up brass recently and I stopped segregating and tracking my brass. I just inspect, load and shoot.
Sooo....
I'm humming along, charges are consistant, OAL is consistant....I'm thinking about timing myself I'm so happy.
Then, at the end of the first box I get a bullet that out of the blue, seats just below the rim.
Hmmm! So much for timing myself....now I'm in trouble shooting mode.
I note that this is the first R-P case in the batch (all Win. & Fed. up to now) and that the case measures the same length as others that loaded fine.
Beutiful shiney brass so I re-size and do it again....with a slow stroke....bullet seats flush to the mouth....I can live with that I guess....go to crimp and the bullet gets pushed down below the rim.
O.K., enough of this monkey business.....pull bullet set aside case and move on.....
the next two cases (also R-P) do the same thing.....and I'm being very slow and deliberate.
corrective actions tried include....
swabing out bullet seating die and LFCD with Q-tip.....a little "sootie" but nothing to get excited about.....bullets seat low .
dig out some more win cases and try those......perfect results as befor.
back to the Rem cases....I notice that after expanding, the case mouth is much looser on the bullet than the Win/Fed. brass was.....bullets either seat low or move when crimping.
Maybe it's a bullet problem and not a case problem.....measure bullets....all spot on at .357".
Well I'm now having a good old time banging away on my kinetic puller!!! :banghead:
After several tries, I got one R-P to seat & crimp properly and gave up on and crunched three others. Finished the box and went to bed.
What on earth is going on????
My only hunch so far is that the R-P range pick up brass, despite coming out of the tumbler looking so nice, may have been reloaded to the point that the the brass had lost it's elasticity and wouldn't re-size properly? Hard to imagine a reloader leaving a 100+ cases that look so nice in the brass bucket though.
Or maybe it was bad brass to start with?
Any ideas for me?
Any comments on Remmington brass?
May have to go back to segregating head stamps?
I'm loading 3.8 gr of W231 and seating to ~1.170". This leaves the rounded shoulder of the bullet about .020" +/- proud of the case. I then apply a VERY light roll crimp with the LFCD, which just alightly "wraps" around the begining of the rounded edge of the bullet.
I've loaded up my own once/twice fired Federal cases with this load and it's a fun little target load for my Taurus 689 (.357 mag w/ 6.5" barrel).
I've scored a lot of very nice looking pick up brass recently and I stopped segregating and tracking my brass. I just inspect, load and shoot.
Sooo....
I'm humming along, charges are consistant, OAL is consistant....I'm thinking about timing myself I'm so happy.
Then, at the end of the first box I get a bullet that out of the blue, seats just below the rim.
Hmmm! So much for timing myself....now I'm in trouble shooting mode.
I note that this is the first R-P case in the batch (all Win. & Fed. up to now) and that the case measures the same length as others that loaded fine.
Beutiful shiney brass so I re-size and do it again....with a slow stroke....bullet seats flush to the mouth....I can live with that I guess....go to crimp and the bullet gets pushed down below the rim.
O.K., enough of this monkey business.....pull bullet set aside case and move on.....
the next two cases (also R-P) do the same thing.....and I'm being very slow and deliberate.
corrective actions tried include....
swabing out bullet seating die and LFCD with Q-tip.....a little "sootie" but nothing to get excited about.....bullets seat low .
dig out some more win cases and try those......perfect results as befor.
back to the Rem cases....I notice that after expanding, the case mouth is much looser on the bullet than the Win/Fed. brass was.....bullets either seat low or move when crimping.
Maybe it's a bullet problem and not a case problem.....measure bullets....all spot on at .357".
Well I'm now having a good old time banging away on my kinetic puller!!! :banghead:
After several tries, I got one R-P to seat & crimp properly and gave up on and crunched three others. Finished the box and went to bed.
What on earth is going on????
My only hunch so far is that the R-P range pick up brass, despite coming out of the tumbler looking so nice, may have been reloaded to the point that the the brass had lost it's elasticity and wouldn't re-size properly? Hard to imagine a reloader leaving a 100+ cases that look so nice in the brass bucket though.
Or maybe it was bad brass to start with?
Any ideas for me?
Any comments on Remmington brass?
May have to go back to segregating head stamps?