Crimp position with TL boolits

[DrCaveman]

The more I read about top-notch mold designs, the more emphasis I seem to find on crimp grooves. Particularly with the Keith swc designs, and beveled crimp groove. Seems very solid, that there is a good chunk of meat for the case edge to grab a hold of. For high-powered loads this seems quite desirable to achieve full combustion & no bullet creep during firing. I am speaking of revolvers here, but it probably applies to all manner of gun.

The only mold I have so far is the Lee TL358-158 swc and I am very happy with the shooting and lack of leading. I am loading to a COL of about 1.57", which leaves the forward-most band out of the case, then crimping between this band and the next one. Finishing with LEe factory crimp die, light crimp for "target" loads, heavy crimp for magnum loads.

I am posing the question not to solve any existing problems, since I have not had any, but rather to head off any problems, or perhaps to make my cartridges more accurate. Does anyone have any tried-and-true COL used with this boolit, or any rules of thumb regarding seating depth/crimp location for TL boolits?

Thanks in advance, thie forum is great.

[geargnasher]

With automatics and a lot of rifle stuff no actual crimp is necessary, just iron the case mouth straight with the crimp die, so it's a non-issue. Usually the microgrooves are plenty deep to do a good roll crimp and you can often find a groove in the right place to do it. If your revolver boolits are pulling under recoil, or ever start to, you might be using and alloy that's too soft to hold in the case. Case tension is what really keeps magnum handgun loads together, crimp is just the icing on the cake. Either way, TL boolits should present fewer crimping issues than traditional types, even crimping in a "lube" groove.

Gear

[DrCaveman]

Thanks gear.

I havent noticed any boolits pulling out of their cases, so I guess everything is OK so far. I am trying out some more powerful 2400 loads (14.5 gr) on my next trip to the "range" so I wanted to double check. Since you stated that the neck tension is the more important aspect, I feel even better. The Lee FCD is not doing much at all to my recent loads, other than the crimping on the full upswing of the ram. I read enough times here about the FCD being kind of a band-aid, and that if is doing too much work, then problems lie elsewhere. Since then I have been more careful about my settings with my expander/powder charging die, and it seems to be working out in less action by the Lee FCD.

On that note, however, I am going to start a thread about neck tension. Thanks again.

[geargnasher]

Before you start a new thread, the person you need to talk to about neck tension is 44man. You might even do an advanced search using his "handle" and the keyword "tension" or "pull", he's posted a lot about it over the years and I'm sure will be willing to discuss it more with your particular gun and load.

Gear

[DrCaveman]

thanks for the tip. I still need to figure out how this whole forum works... I already started the other thread, but I will do what you said. It seems this forum may suffer from a few too many threads, dare I say, and I guess I am not helping. Surely most of the info has already been discussed.

thanks again.