Well, I doubt that would apply to anyone but me, ever, and hopefully not again. You see, copper is soft. Try sizing soft copper-coated case necks without sticking the case or ripping the plating off. Short version is I used brass shim stock and a .358 Winchester form/trim die to size the necks down just enough to hold the bullets. All that PITA is why I traded that rifle off.Originally Posted by TXGunNut
Ok, in general, I have found through a lot of experimenting that "bullet pull", or how hard the case neck grips the bullet, needs to be the same every time or you'll have flyers out of the group from the necks that aren't the same as the rest of them. I don't use any sort of crimp unless the magazine mechanism and/or recoil of the rifle demands it, or in some rare but definite instances when I'm trying to bump the powder ignition speed up a bit (300 Blackout is a good example of when I crimp case mouths firmly). Why don't I use crimp unless absolutely necessary? I don't really know, maybe I'm just lazy or maybe I've done it six ways from Sunday and MOST of the time crimping case mouths on bolt-action rifles doesn't seem to help anything, so I don't bother because I'm lazy. I've also found through a lot of trial and error that somewhere between .0015" and .0020" of "interference fit" between bullet and case neck gives me the best accuracy, most of the time, in most of my rifles from 6.5mm to 35 caliber. Also, this little bit won't crush soft-ish bullets when you seat them. Occasionally I have to size the case mouths down a touch more than that so the bullets stay put, but that depends on the rifle and caliber. How do I do this? I buy and often modify bullet sizing dies that make the bullets the size I want them, generally just a few "tenths" smaller than throat entrance diameter. Different alloys at different tempers spring back differently, so I have like eight 30-caliber bullet sizing dies, each sanded to a slightly different size. Once I have my bullets where I want them, I size the necks using any number of neck bushing dies, honed-out FL sizing dies, collet sizing dies (Lee's collet dies are extremely handy for precision case neck sizing to just the size you want without having to buy $50 or more in neck bushings for a single caliber). Here I like to put the neck about a thousandth or two smaller than finished size, and use an RCBS cast bullet neck expanding die or modified Lyman M die (spud modded to blend the step into a very gentle taper) to bring the case neck up to my desired final ID, plus add just enough bellmouth so a Hornady gas check on my sized bullets will sit about 3/4 of it's height down in the mouth when I place the bullet there by hand for seating.
Notice I don't use any FL factory dies or drag-o-matic expander buttons. Factory dies size the necks WAY too small and the expander buttons yank the necks every which way but straight. That right there is a major cause of accurate velocity limitations with cast bullets, most people are using regular old jacketed bullet dies and maybe a Lyman M die to blow the necks back up, or maybe a Lee Universal bellmouthing die, and their necks are crooked, off center, and neck tension varies like crazy. Jacketed bullets don't care about this stuff so much, but cast bullets really do.
That's the way I do it and the tools I tend to use. There are lots and lots of different ways to accomplish the same thing, but hopefully you get the point about not overworking your necks with conventional reloading dies, the need to find a way to get your bullets the size your rifle likes, and using whatever tools work for you that will put your case necks consistently at the diameter needed to hold the bullets with something like 1.5 thousandths "tension".
Gear
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