I got back into reloading a few months ago and started with 10mm. I got Hornady dies and have a Lee single-stage press. The 10mm reloading went fine and I was using plated bullets. I then got some Hornady 9mm dies and tried loading with them and the bullets are mostly seating crooked. Also, the brass is shaving some of the bullet off (these are cast lead), so it almost seems like the cases are too small for the bullets? Not sure what I'm doing wrong here; can anyone offer suggestions?
Bullets Seating Crooked
- Thread starter Herk
- Start date
It sounds like you need to open the “mouth” a little after sizing.
My powder measure does that when charging the case with powder.
Pistol dies are an 3 die set , #1 resizing -decapping die , #2 case mouth expander die #3 bullet seating die/ crimping die
ps do not expand the case mouth to much , just enough to get the bullet started
Thanks for this; I followed the instructions in the Hornady manual step-by-step and by the time I was looking at a tray of loaded cartridges (albeit poorly done), I had not yet reached the part of the manual that talked about the expander die. So maybe shame on me for not reading the whole manual before getting started and maybe shame on Hornady for the dumb layout of their instruction manual.
Another question: I never used the expander die with my 10mm loads and they didn't have any issues seating. Did I just get lucky or is the expander die something that only comes into play with cast lead bullets?
i dont load cast but i use the expander die on all pistol bullets, just make sure you do not expand to much , i load alot of 10 milly and never had trouble with them , but i load jacked bullets , im glad you fixed your problem, reach out to us any time , a few good reloaders hang out in here
I load 32 s&w long with coated cast bullets. I have found that the cases need to be expanded a little more than cases receiving fmj bullets for just this reason.
Same here with lead vs. jacketed/plated, just not .32 S&W long.... .38 and .45acp.
I just loaded up some rounds and I made sure to make both the bell and the crimp very minimal. I work nights so I might be able to swing by the range before work this week to test them out. All I can say right now is that these rounds look a LOT better than the crooked ones I did at first. Thanks for the info, guys!