offrink wrote:Even if they did I would still ask! Someone ALWAYS helps out us dumb ones! Actually I’m very glad to have found this forum because of the wealth of information that has been learned by very few and shared openly. This is still a growing caliber and for me the toughest to reload for so far. Previously it was my first tapered rifle round.
So once I get the round seated to the proper depth and crimped with the seating die, do I just go back and run the taper crimp? Can the handle over, tighten down the crimp til it touches the round, cam the handle back and tighten down a half turn at a time until I get the crimp I want. Sound right?
Mostly right but for one important detail. Never adjust the seating die body down to where you impart the crimp it has built in.
Take an empty case, back off the seating die to where you can run that resized case all the way up up without it touching the crimp former. Screw the seating die down until you feel that crimp former barely touch the case. Back the die off (up) a half turn and tighen the locking ring. Then tighten the set screw. You will never adjust that body height again. From there on you will only adjust the seating stem knob to achieve the seating depth you choose for a given bullet model. Now once you've charged the case, go ahead and seat the bullet to whatever COL you choose. Unless you have more than one press, go through all your bullet seatings. I use two side by side single stage presses. one holds the seating and the other holds the taper crimp die. In the case of only one single stage press, after you're done seating all your bullets for that particular experiment, remove the seating die and put the taper crimp die in. Run one of your rounds all the way up and screw the taper crimp die down until you feel it engage the case mouth. Now you can "cam the handle back" and slowly adjust the die down, pausing to re-measure the mouth diameter as close to the lip as possible, until you reach the aforementioned diameters. Don't bother using the lock ring set screw unless you're going to crank out the same recipe forever. Just hand tighten the lock ring so the die doesn't drift and away you go.
I'm fussy about my loads so I usually run the ram up about half way onto the taper crimp engagement range, back off enough to unlock the case, rotate the case about 90 degrees and apply the remainder of the taper crimp. The cases float somewhat in the shell holder and when you engage the taper crimp, if the case is a little off center, the downward pressure will lock it in position, a little off center. The stop-n-turn allows it to re-register more to center. Another method for encouraging it to find the middle most position is to run the ram up, when you feel it start engaging the taper crimp rattle short stroke it a small amount several times, that will encourage the case to jostle to center in the taper, then send it home all the way. Hard to put that into words that make sense to anyone but me. If you just go all the way without making an effort to center the case in the taper, you will feel different amounts of resistance to the crimping action from one round to the next. That's how you know its not always in the perfect alignment. This nuance also applies when you're resizing your lubed cases. It helps with consistency if those cases being resized are centered in the taper of the sizing die as well. I usually deprime in a separate step, so the decapping stem is not in my sizing die. I run a lubed case up until it resists entering the sizing die and then do that rattle short stroke to allow the case to self center before the pressure locks it into position. Doing that when sizing, you'll feel an obvious reduction in force needed to push the case all the way up into the die. The difference in resistance is very noticeable when a case is in proper alignment versus slightly off center. The net result is cases that are as close to coaxiality as possible.
Straight case, straight seat, straight crimp, straight shot.
I'm full of this kinda stuff...
Hoot