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