What part of the bullet is getting caught up on the gauge? Im wondering if perhaps your depriming/resizing die needs to be re-adjusted? Another thought and previous problem I was having when I first started using the DAA 2in1 die was that I was belling it too much. Only bell enough that the MBF can set the bullet without help. Lastly (although not DAA) there were a couple you tube videos that were helpful in understanding how to adjust the 2in1 die.
I did reduce the belling a bit, but I may need to reduce it some more. I did watch that video, and it was helpful to understand how to adjust the die, but unfortunately, I was still unable to get it to work. Thanks for the reply.
You might had said how you are adjusting the die and I missed it. I did read you are adjusting the die down and then crushing the case, I know how you did that, you didn't back off on the seating stem so as you increase the die depth you also increase the bullet depth. Once the case is crimped and you continue to push the bullet something has to give and it's the case.
Not necessarily true. I found that as I was lowering the die trying to remove the flare (on a case without a bullet as per your instructions below), I could start crushing the case even without the seating stem installed into the die. However, I agree that I did probably make this mistake a few times at the beginning.
Not talking down to you but since you never did this before I will state the simple steps.
Screw in the seating/crimp die until it just touches the case.
Seat a bullet to exactly where you want it to be when complete.
BACK OFF the seating stem so it's far away from the bullet.
Screw the die down until the flare is removed or to where you want the case to measure, then lock down the die.
Now screw the seating stem in until it touches the now crimped case/bullet.
The next round should seat and crimp correctly.
Followed your instructions, step by step (similar to the video above), and I was never able to fully remove the flare from the case without crushing it.
To me, it looks like the die isn't a taper crimp, but a roll crimp. My .45 taper crimp will not make a roll crimp as shown in the pic.
I am beginning to think this is the case as well. As I was performing the steps from
@ArchAngelCD above, I could see a definite rolling in of the case edge as I lowered the die, which produced the bulge again.
Measure a bullet again with the wide part of the caliper instead of the knife edge.
Also measure case wall thickness at the neck. Best done with a ball micrometer but you can get close with the knife edge part of the calipers.
Measure a flared case with a seated bullet with no crimp near the base of the bullet underneath the flare.
Bullet diameter using wider part of blade = 0.4000"
Case wall thickness using calipers = 0.00850 to 0.0105"
Case diameter with bullet inserted (no crimp) as measured at base of bullet = 0.4190"
As a further test, I took an empty case, sized it, flared it, then ran it up into my standard Dillon taper crimp die (no bullet), and got the following measurements:
0.4140" at an upper midpoint on the cartridge, about where the bottom of the bullet would seat to if it was there.
0.4135" at the case mouth.
Pretty close to straight up and down after the flare, then crimp, which is what I would expect, however with no bullet, these measurement might not be pertinent.
