Seating Problems

Talk about your 450b reloading experience, ask questions, etc...

Moderator: MudBug

Forum rules
Please try and keep it safe!

This information is the responsibility of the community, not the forum. 450bushmaster.net is not responsible if you blow yourselves up.

Seating Problems

Postby randyf » Sun Apr 25, 2010 2:23 pm

I keep have trouble with my honady dies..........the case keeps snagging on something inside the seating die.
Its like the case mouth is too small for the case to enter.

Anybody else having trouble with these dies?

When the case goes into the die it either 1- goes in smoothly (very rare)
2- snags when going in and the makes popping or cracking and then goes in
3- snag and won't go in and the case gets bent up like in picture.

Image
Last edited by randyf on Mon Apr 26, 2010 9:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
randyf
 
Posts: 70
Joined: Mon Nov 16, 2009 6:06 pm
Location: mid-west Ohio

Re: Seating Problems

Postby Hoot » Sun Apr 25, 2010 2:44 pm

Its that silly sleeve retaining ring spring. The points on the end of the spring snag on the case mouths. Its the price of having the guide sleeve, which in it's defense does a good job of keeping the bullet aligned during seating. If you look closely near the mouth of the die, you'll see that ring spring.
Hoot
In Theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In Practice, there is.
User avatar
Hoot
 
Posts: 5083
Joined: Tue Feb 09, 2010 9:34 am
Location: Minnesota

Re: Seating Problems

Postby pitted bore » Tue Apr 27, 2010 1:08 am

Hoot (& randyf)-

It might be worthwhile to take another look at the seating die. Here's what mine looks like. The sleeve is protruding from the mouth of the die body, and a case has been inserted in the sleeve:Image.

It appears to me that the case mouth cannot snag on the little stub of the ring spring that protrudes through the die body and holds the sleeve in the die. I purposely tried to snag it, and at best it would make a slight scratch on the case wall.

I can think of a couple of possibilities that are causing randyf's problem.

[1]
The die is adjusted so that the roll-crimp shoulder inside the sleeve is bearing against the case mouth before the bullet is seated. If this is so, then the case will crumple as shown in randyf's picture.

The shoulder is about 1/4" from the mouth of the sleeve, and is easily visible on my die.

The cure for this is to re-adjust the die so that the roll=crimp shoulder never touches the case mouth during the entire seating operation. There have been several discussions on this forum that question why Hornady put the roll-crimp shoulder in a die intended for a cartridge that should never be roll-crimped.

[2]
It's possible that randyf is either not using the case flaring die, or has it misadjusted. If it isn't set to flare (bell) the case mouth, the bullet can mash the case mouth during seating. (Hoot, I know you can get away without the flaring operation, but I cannot. After FL sizing, I have to apply a minimum flare, or I get crumpled cases that look sort of like randyf's.)

There may be other possibilities, but I don't think it's the tip of the ring spring.

--Bob
User avatar
pitted bore
 
Posts: 700
Joined: Sun Jun 07, 2009 8:05 pm
Location: The U.P.'s U.P.

Re: Seating Problems

Postby Hoot » Tue Apr 27, 2010 4:07 am

I must be losing it. I swear I did not see those images in Randy's first post. Obviously the ring springs could not have caused such damage, though they sometimes do hang onto the rounds mainly during extraction. Bob has your cause correct.

Bob, I can not stress enough the importance of having cleaned inside the neck as well as having removed any burr with the chamfering tool, in order for the no-expander/flaring tool approach to work.

Hoot
In Theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In Practice, there is.
User avatar
Hoot
 
Posts: 5083
Joined: Tue Feb 09, 2010 9:34 am
Location: Minnesota

Re: Seating Problems

Postby randyf » Tue Apr 27, 2010 8:30 am

I took the die apart last night cleaned and lubed it.

I then tried to load a few more rounds.....the first one absolutely would not go into the die, I tried several times turning the case, and I put a little pressure on the case changing the angle........its like the die is too small for the case.

If I do not put any flare on the neck of the case it will go into the die, but its really tuff to get a bullet in the case.
If I put any flare on the case it will not go into the die.

I'm thinking about taking a dremel tool or file and opening up the flare on the mouth of the die a little.
randyf
 
Posts: 70
Joined: Mon Nov 16, 2009 6:06 pm
Location: mid-west Ohio

Re: Seating Problems

Postby NordicRX8 » Tue Apr 27, 2010 1:05 pm

randyf wrote:I took the die apart last night cleaned and lubed it.

I then tried to load a few more rounds.....the first one absolutely would not go into the die, I tried several times turning the case, and I put a little pressure on the case changing the angle........its like the die is too small for the case.

If I do not put any flare on the neck of the case it will go into the die, but its really tuff to get a bullet in the case.
If I put any flare on the case it will not go into the die.

I'm thinking about taking a dremel tool or file and opening up the flare on the mouth of the die a little.


The dreaded Dremel tool... are you sure you want to do that to your expensive Hornady 450B seating die? Maybe a replacement by Hornady is in order.

Where in Ohio are you located? If you're not too far, I'd be willing to bring my die set over to compare or let you try to determine if your seating die is out of spec.

ETA: I can insert a fired and unsized case without issue into my seating die. Even with a minimal flare on the case mouth, I can get a case to slide into the seating die.
A gun in the hands of a bad man is a very dangerous thing. A gun in the hands of a good person is no danger to anyone except the bad guys... - Charlton Heston
User avatar
NordicRX8
 
Posts: 50
Joined: Sat Jun 13, 2009 12:41 pm
Location: Lost In Middle America, OH

Re: Seating Problems

Postby pitted bore » Tue Apr 27, 2010 2:12 pm

randyf wrote:If I do not put any flare on the neck of the case it will go into the die, but its really tuff to get a bullet in the case.
If I put any flare on the case it will not go into the die.

I'm thinking about taking a dremel tool or file and opening up the flare on the mouth of the die a little.


randyf-
Don't do the Dremel surgery yet.

Could you post the measurements of diameter of your case mouths after FL resizing, and then after expanding (flaring)?

As a guess, you're over-doing the mouth expansion. The Hornady expander die is fully capable of really belling the mouth of a case. This could make it difficult to insert the case into the seating die. With repeated over-flaring and taper crimping, the brass at the mouth can be overworked, and start to crack and split sooner than otherwise.

--Bob
User avatar
pitted bore
 
Posts: 700
Joined: Sun Jun 07, 2009 8:05 pm
Location: The U.P.'s U.P.

Re: Seating Problems

Postby Siringo » Tue Apr 27, 2010 8:58 pm

AND -- are you using Hornady brass or cut down 284's? Without reaming, 284 cases with .452 bullets will stick. What kind of bullets are those in your pics?

Reason I ask about the bullets is that they look like 300 grain 45-70 bullets.
Siringo
 
Posts: 682
Joined: Sun Jun 07, 2009 10:15 pm

Re: Seating Problems

Postby pitted bore » Fri Apr 30, 2010 6:41 am

randyf wrote:If I do not put any flare on the neck of the case it will go into the die, but its really tuff to get a bullet in the case.
If I put any flare on the case it will not go into the die.


I was curious about randyf's statement, so I did a little trial with case mouth expansion. The attached image shows what happened. I'll try to explain what I did and the results, and it may help randyf with the problem.

The numbers below the individual cases indicate the outside diameter of the case at the mouth.
To help show what was going on, I put a Hornady FTX 250-grain bullet upside down in the case mouths, to display visually how a thousandth or two of mouth diameter can made a big difference in seating. Notice that from right to left the bullets sink much further into the case mouths.

0.473: (right-most case in image) This is a new unfired, unsized case, fresh out of a box of Hornady brass.

0.474: (2nd from right) This is a once-fired Hornady case that I put through Hornady's FL resize die. The case mouth has not been expanded.

0.477: (middle) This is a once-fired case that has been FL resized. I then used Hornady's expander die to bell/flare/expand the case neck just enough so that a bullet will seat easily with the seating die. I use this amount of expansion for my own cases. It's difficult to feel any expansion with the fingers, compared to the unexpanded case. Probably I could get away with less expansion.

0.482: (2nd from left) This is a once-fired, FL-resized case that was expanded a bit more than the middle case. I can barely feel any expansion with my fingers. However, the extra five-thousandths does not allow the case to enter the sleeve of the seating die. It gets hung up and just pushes the sleeve into the die body. I did not check whether trying to seat a bullet would produce a crumpled case such as randyf experienced, but that seems a clear possibility.

0.530: (left-most case in image) Just to see whether it was possible to misuse the expander die and to see the result, I screwed the expander die down into the press a bit and ran one of the once-fired FL-resized cases into the die. Hornady has not limited the amount of expansion their die can provide.

Summarizing: When Hornady wrote their instructions for adjusting the expander die, they were just a little vague: "... screw down the die in small increments until the mouth of the case has been flared just enough to seat a bullet." and "... excessive flare may keep the case from properly entering the seating die." For a novice operator, the difference between "just enough" and "excessive" is only a hard-to-detect five thousandths.

--Bob
Attachments
bells2.jpg
bells2.jpg (38.94 KiB) Viewed 13629 times
User avatar
pitted bore
 
Posts: 700
Joined: Sun Jun 07, 2009 8:05 pm
Location: The U.P.'s U.P.

Re: Seating Problems

Postby Hoot » Fri Apr 30, 2010 6:52 am

Nice work. I used the expander/flare die sparingly (like the middle example) the first time I loaded 250 FTX in 1st-fired Hornady brass. Worked great and yeah, it's a little learn-by-doing with the flare part. I think the .284 cases are a little more heavy on the learn-by-doing scale, but doable if you ream them. After having good success with not expanding and the 200 FTX, I did some 250's that way. Over the chrony, there was no difference between them and the expanded ones, so my vote is to use the expander/flare die, albeit sparingly with the 250s.
hoot
In Theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In Practice, there is.
User avatar
Hoot
 
Posts: 5083
Joined: Tue Feb 09, 2010 9:34 am
Location: Minnesota


Return to Reloading for the 450b

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 28 guests