seating cast rifle boolits being damaged

im loading some 308 boolits and the nose of the boolits has a ring on it from the seating stem crushing the roundish nose profile. this happen to you guys, how was the accuracy on the "ringed" rounds.

hello bee
i believe that you have one of two things happening here or both
1. the throat of the case is too tight and it require too much force to seat the bullet
solution check the inside dia of the case after sizing make sure it is not too small
2. the bullet seater punch does not fit the nose of the bullet
solution pull the punch check fit with bullet if not correct you can use some epoxy in the punch to re-conform it using the bullet nose
3. it could be a combination of both of these
also are you chamfering the inside of the case mouth this could contribute to this also
mule

It happens to my 7.62x54r rounds also. Out to a hundred yards, never tried farther, the affect on accuracy is negligible.

I also run my fingernail around the ring to remove flaired material.

I've done thousands of bullets with a ring around them. It's much better to have a ring, than to have a dull nose, because a ring means your bullet was centered in the punch. Just make sure the ring is on the ogive and not the meplat!

The nose of the bullet has very little to do with accuracy as long as it is straight and concentric. The driving band diameter and the squareness of the base is everything.
It's a real good idea to use a custom expander from NOE to set up the correct neck tension, get the bullet started straight, and prevent the case neck from sizing down your bullets.
Load your rifle ammo just like pistol ammo:
1. FL or neck size
2. Expand the neck
3. Prime and charge the cases
4. Seat the bullets
5. Crimp the bullets in place (personally, I rarely do this unless I'm using a levergun. That residual case mouth flare is good to help center things up!)

1. Chuck the nose punch in a drill. Place a strip of crocus over the nose of a boolit and spin the punch on it until enough material is removed/polished away so that is will no longer leave the ring.

2. Use a different nose punch.

I get the ring on some of mine too.
I find it a bit odd when I have two sets of dies and one leaves a ring and one don't and when I switch boolits the other does and the first one don't now.

I get so worked up about it I have to go shoot all 300 rounds with rings on them and start over. :kidding:

I have not found that ring to be an issue but am more concerned about shaving the sides. To lessen either, I use an old sharpening steel with a conical round point I bought at a garage sale to slightly expand the neck of the case. Not fancy but it works and is cheap.

Your getting good advise -
I found the lyman M die stepped neck flaring tool to be a real saver on force required to seat my cast boolits.

I found that you can use a little two part epoxy to make your seating stem an exact fit
for your cast boolit and you can modify your lube sizer punch. You just clean the part insert a little epoxy - take a boolit and put a little release on it (JPW worked for me)
and gently introduce the parts together and wipe off the extra. If you change boolits and
don't want to keep the parts the way they are then you can chip out the epoxy.

You will also find that if your boolit has a flat meplat you can use a large flat seating stem or punch without the ring forming.

What they said. If using soft alloy, make sure the nose isn't obturated by seating. I did some ACWW for 308 and they wouldn't chamber.

Another vote for using the Lyman M die. :-)

For boolits with a meplat (most of mine) I took a brass 1/4" bolt and flattened the head, cut it off the the proper length, and in a drill motor and with a file I took it down to the diameter to fit in the die. (some of my boolits need to be inside the die completely to be fully lubed). I use this for all, including most of my round nose boolits. I just get a slight meplat on the round nose doing it.

Goodsteel gives good advice, and I agree with him completely.
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