Odd GC shank

[gnoahhh]

I picked up a Saeco .30 mold that makes a tapered GC shank. The bottom mic's .281, the top (right below the bottom ring ) mic's .300. Heigth of the shank is .100. Seating GC's (Hornady's) is problematic. Even when using a separate check seater the check wants to crimp on shy of bottoming against the base, and usually crooked to boot. Is this odd, or am I doing something wrong? If this is a problem someone else has encountered and overcome would you share your approach?

[Echo]

I haven't had this problem, but a work-around could be to pop the GC's with a proper-sized RH bolt to expand them so they would at least seat - then sizing will crimp them on nicely. I hate work-arounds...
And you might check w/Saeco to see if they will make it right.

[Will]

I have that problem with a few of my older moulds and just start the check then tap the base against a flat steel plate a few times before sizing. This seems to work for me.

[wallenba]

You might try using a .30 collet in a Hornady bullet puller to swage it down.

[Doc Highwall]

Have you had any problems seating the gas checks on other bullets and what did the shanks measure on them. Trying to make sure that the gas checks good. NOE makes a swage for bullets that have an over size shank.

[gnoahhh]

Thanks for the replies. The checks are good and work flawlessly on all of my Lymans, NEIs, and other Saecos. It's just this one that gave me fits.

Echo's response got me thinking, so I went to the lathe this afternoon and turned a punch out of 1/2" CRS that I can snub into the ram of my small arbor press. The tip of the punch is turned to exactly match the tapered shank on the bullets. Pressing this punch into a GC against a chunk of flat-ground steel yielded a slightly tapered check that sweetly fits on the bullet flat up against the base. (Had to go back into the lathe to polish it really good so the checks pop off.) Sized as normal, voila, perfectly seated checks. I can't wait to try out the first ones tomorrow.

[MT Gianni]

Lyman had tapered check bases in the 60's and their checks were tapered. It could date from that era. Annealed checks can help.

[gnoahhh]

My little innovation worked. (Thanks again Echo). In a controlled experiment I fired several groups with gas checks seated normally. Some were noticeably not seated square, some noticeably short of bottoming onto the bullet. The accuracy wasn't bad at all actually. Then I fired a few groups using the added steps described above. Big improvement, as one would expect. Testing done at 50 yds. with a pretty little Savage 1899H in .303, tang sights, 28gr. 3031, 190 gr. flat nose cast BHN12. First batch averaged about 1 1/4", second batch were all tight touching clusters of a little bigger than 1/2" up to an inch for the largest. I'll be casting more this week and move out to 100 and 150 yds. (my personal limit for iron-sighted rifles), but I think I may have have found the combo for this year's deer hunting!

This is my second SAECO .30 190FN. The second one is pretty identical to the first- same ring diameter and nose diameter, major difference in gas check shank as noted. I love these 190 grain wide flat-nosed splatterers for hunting with in .30/30 class cartridges.

[w30wcf]

Nice work! A few years back I had to make a tapered punch to open up .30 cal gas checks to fit an oversized g.c. shank. It worked like a charm. Glad to hear that it worked well for you.

w30wcf