by plant_one » Thu Aug 31, 2017 8:15 pm
just as a side note - i had a good friend just starting to reload. his buddy was in the same boat - that being greener than green when it comes to reloading. it was the blind leading the blind. he read a bunch of articles on the web, loaded up a few test charges, and then loaded up 300+ rounds of 50 beowulf.
somewhere along the way - around 20-30 rounds into the process from what i can tell by the few "good" bullets i salvaged - his crimp die got readjusted. he was crimping the case mouth's to .500 - like all the way into the bullet.
when they went to use some of the ammo, first round ripped the case right in half on them. 2nd round refused to chamber. they didnt find out why until half a peice of brass fell out.
they were so bad that when i pulled the bullets to salvage what was slaveageable, i broke a RCBS collet about 200 rounds in and the bullets now had a canneulure crimped into them.
thankfully nobody got hurt. and i got 300 peices of beowulf brass and about 10 lbs of scrap lead to melt down when i tore them down.
crimping is cool, but you HAVE to be careful to not over crimp. Not only can you cause pressure spikes, but with these straight wall cases, you can also cause headspace issues as the round will fall to far into the chamber and act like a vise when the round goes off, further upping the pressure. no bueno especailly if you're using a more volatile powder like h110 thats known to be sensative once you approach 100% case fill and start to compress.
slow measured steps as my old boss used to say.