Originally Posted by
gloob
Your posts don't make any sense.
All of the reloading companies make crimp dies.
Lee came up with the idea to make a crimp die that also has a carbide sizing ring in the mouth of the die. Sometimes when you crimp and seat at the same time, you make a slight bulge at the case mouth, and this post-sizing ring is supposed to iron that back out as you withdraw the case. But you only get this bulge if you seat and crimp in the same step. So the carbide ring doesn't fix that problem. Crimping in a separate step after seating fixed the problem. You can do that with any crimping die.
Even if it did fix this problem, the carbide ring is sized to work with nominally thick brass and jacketed bullets. A cast bullet that is at least 1 thou larger than jacketed and using typical thickness brass will make the cartridge too big for the FCD sizing ring. This will swage the bullet, just slightly. So your boolits is slightly smaller, AND you lose some neck tension after running it through the FCD.
The carbide ring is usually tight even on a jacketed bullet in order to do what it is theoretically supposed to. It usually touches and drags on the brass where the seated bullet passed through. There's no more room in there for a larger cast bullet.
The problem the carbide ring "fixes" is if you load unsized cast bullets, and some of them are too big for the ammo to fit in the chamber. Or maybe you have a handful of pickup cases that fit in all your guns using jacketed bullets, but they're a smidge too thick in the case mouth for one of your gun's chamber when loaded with cast bullets. If you use the FCD, the carbide ring makes the ammo fit in your chamber. But the bullet will setback with thumb pressure, now. And it's mixed in with all your good ammo and will pass the plunk test, chamber, and fire in your gun at w/e OAL it ends up at. And the undersized boolit may foul your barrel and tumble 20 yards out the muzzle.