I bought 300 cases from the local gunshop of used 357 mag brass, cleaned and resized them with my Lee die.. loaded 10 up and saw I was getting very inconsistant crimps which were caused by the different lengths of brass. (I am using the Lee Factory Crimp Die)
I thought my solution was to buy a lee case trimmer for the .357 mag, but it doesn't touch most of the brass. The Lee trimmer trims it to about 1.280. 80% of my brass seem to be in the 1.280 - 1.270 range.
Would it be safe to trim all of them down to 1.270 to catch 80%+ of them? The Lee manual states the max length is 1.290.
Should I be concerned with the shorter case and smaller volume?
I am using Lee 158gr SWC TL bullet, do people have good luck getting a sufficient crimp to handle being loaded in a lever actions tubular mag?
thanks,