Simpler, but little transferable knowledge
Thanks for asking our advice.
Straight-walled cartridges are simpler than belted bottlenecked cartridges by far. But you will find little about your experience with rifle cartridge die setup that will help you set up your pistol dies. They are as different as night and day. Well, maybe as different as late morning and early afternoon, anyway.
But the pistol dies are simpler because you don't have to simultaneously adjust a bottleneck's shoulder and sizing. Each die pretty much has one and only one job to do.
Set the sizing die so you size the entire length of the cartridge (but don't let the shell holder hit the carbide ring, as that metal is brittle and you don't want to break it). Use a feeler gauge or a piece of paper as a spacer to set the clearance.
Set the case-mouth belling die to you don't bell the case mouth any more than the minimum necessary to start a bullet into the case. The powder drop will take care of itself if you are using the Auto-Disk powder measure.
Set the bullet seating die so the like the sizing die was set, but without the seating stem in place, then screw the seating stem down until the bullet is inserted in the case to the right depth.
Set the crimp die to provide the amount of crimp you need. A 9mm has no shoulder or belt, so it has to headspace on the case mouth, so you have to leave the case mouth a few thousands larger diameter than the bullet as a shoulder to keep the cartridge from entering too far into the chamber. (Glad you got the 4-die set, so seating and crimping are not done at the same time; that gets difficult to describe.)
Of course, headspacing on the case mouth means that the case length is critical. Fortunately, unlike bottlenecked cartridges, pistol cartridges rarely lengthen after many uses. You will probably lose them before they wear out.
Lost Sheep
fly would be greatly appreciated.....Thanks, hvychev77
