Gas Check seating

[Larry Gibson]

Your method is working for you so if happy with that method go for it......results are what counts.

Just another suggestion though; given the Aluminum GCs are most likely slip ons you might simply start the GC on and push the bullet through your Lee sizer GC first. I do that with various bullets when using a lot of tight fitting slip on GCs, my own and old Lyman's.

[Dapaki]

You guys are very creative but what you really need is proper fitting gas check and lee sizer. No extra seating step required.

https://youtu.be/j0dXDFuGPrY

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I would have to say that there is often more to it than that.

Lyman, Gator, even the aluminum GC on my 7mm boolits "wash" the GC material down when sized through the LEE sizer no matter how well the GC fits. The sizer is polished and sizes correctly but I do have to size the boolits base first to keep the material from washing.

I believe it is the tapered heel of the LEE boolit that causes this and not the GC or die.

[JM7.7x58]

I would have to say that there is often more to it than that.

Lyman, Gator, even the aluminum GC on my 7mm boolits "wash" the GC material down when sized through the LEE sizer no matter how well the GC fits. The sizer is polished and sizes correctly but I do have to size the boolits base first to keep the material from washing.

I believe it is the tapered heel of the LEE boolit that causes this and not the GC or die.

I have to agree. The Lee shank on my 324-175-1R was so frustrating to work with. I finally gave up and drilled out the shank and made it a plain base mold (Thanks Ben for the tutorial thread on shank removal). Where as, I have a Lyman 323470 that is a dream to work with.

I size and install a gas check on these bullets in one step. I size from as cast to .318”. So they are being sized down .006” to .008” in one sizing. I’m asking a lot by sizing them down this much. The 323470 will size down just fine when cast out of air cooled #2 alloy. The checks start to wash off the shanks of this bullet if the #2 alloy is water dropped, it is just too hard(I bent the handle on my classic cast press sizing these water dropped bullets).

The tapered shank on the Lee bullet would smear off a check even with softer alloys, like 50/50 lead and WW with 2% tin. I also tried to seat and size in two steps with the Lee bullet, .323” and then .318”, they still failed. I think that the shank in too large on the Lee bullet and the taper doesn’t help anything.

I had not started to press on checks when I was fiddling with the Lee mold. I might have been able to make that mold/bullet work if I had pressed them on first. I started to use my seating stem press method on another bullet that has a large shank, that was made by NOE. The NOE shank is large but it has parallel sides and if the check is pressed on first it will pass through the Lee sizer just fine. This NOE is also a 8mm bullet that I size down to .318”.

Did I have to get creative? Yes, I did. Did it work? Yes it did!

JM

[JM7.7x58]

Your method is working for you so if happy with that method go for it......results are what counts.

Just another suggestion though; given the Aluminum GCs are most likely slip ons you might simply start the GC on and push the bullet through your Lee sizer GC first. I do that with various bullets when using a lot of tight fitting slip on GCs, my own and old Lyman's.

Larry,
I have tried the upside down method. I ended up with bent bullets. I just couldn’t get a long round nosed bullet to start straight enough in the die. They ended up looking like bananas.

JM

[avogunner]

I use a Lyman 450 to seat my checks and have no problem for all my 30 cal rifle molds but ... I have a Lyman 358156 that drops beautiful boolits at .360-361 but because of that, the gas check shank is almost too big for the Hornady checks I use. Very difficult to get them started on the boolit and a good number would even shave lead from the boolit when seating. What I needed was a way to flare out the checks to ease the seating and in a thread on this good forum, someone mentioned such a tool offered by NOE. It fixed me right up so keep it in mind if you encounter a similar situation with any of your molds.
Semper Fi.

[Cosmic_Charlie]

I have a Lee 309-180R that the heels are a bit large on. I do them nose first and once I meet resistance I give the base a small rap with the press lever and then push it through. I have closely inspected the seated and sized checks and not found any cockeyed. I do have a Lyman 467 top punch coming along with a NOE seating gizmo but the rap method seems to have worked in the mean time.

[fcvan]

I have read on here that a guy was using a steel ball bearing to flare checks for a fat shank boolit he loaded. I make my own checks and for my 1 fat shank I use slightly thinner aluminum. I also anneal the aluminum strips before making the disks for the checks. I seat using Lee push-through dies by pushing the boolit onto the check before putting into the die. Using light pressure with the ram the check 'trues' itself before pushing the boolit all the way through the die. Annealing really improved this process.

[NMBill]

I use the RCBS Lube / Sizer and Hornady gas checks with Accurate molds / bullets and the checks usually snap on. However, I saw that if I ran the bullet into the die base down, 10% of the gas checks would be crimped on crooked. I thought that was weird. To solve this, I took the lube pressure off of the resizer and ran the bullets into the die nose down to crimp the checks. That works but created an extra step as the bullets had to be run again base down to be lubed, but it saved buying the NOE seater.

For the Newbies that don't know, you can put a finished bullet into your calipers base down and hold it up to the light and if you have a crooked check, it will be revealed.

[dimaprok]

I use the RCBS Lube / Sizer and Hornady gas checks with Accurate molds / bullets and the checks usually snap on. However, I saw that if I ran the bullet into the die base down, 10% of the gas checks would be crimped on crooked. I thought that was weird. To solve this, I took the lube pressure off of the resizer and ran the bullets into the die nose down to crimp the checks. That works but created an extra step as the bullets had to be run again base down to be lubed, but it saved buying the NOE seater.

For the Newbies that don't know, you can put a finished bullet into your calipers base down and hold it up to the light and if you have a crooked check, it will be revealed.

Might be easier to run through lee push through sizer first, they are inexpensive and if you if you get a cheapy lee press and invert it it's a lot easier too not having to line up the bullet on the push through rod and while you're at it, you can ditch the star luber and powder coat

[trimar009]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxm-lQovp5U. Works for me with home made Alum GC's!

[Super Sneaky Steve]

You guys are very creative but what you really need is proper fitting gas check and lee sizer. No extra seating step required.

https://youtu.be/j0dXDFuGPrY

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I've found that to be the case too. I was trying to seat Hornady 30cal checks on my 762x39 boolits. After the powdercoat none would seat flush by hand but after push through sizing they all came out perfect. My lead was soft so maybe that helped.

[hickfu]

I use an Arbor Press from harborfreight https://www.harborfreight.com/search?q=arbor%20press

Just do a little pressure on small bullets or you will bend them.
I GC'd 30-30 and 35 Rem bullets today using it, I like that I can see if the GC is on straight before putting in the push through sizer to crimp them.

[Larry Gibson]

Larry,
I have tried the upside down method. I ended up with bent bullets. I just couldn’t get a long round nosed bullet to start straight enough in the die. They ended up looking like bananas.

JM

I thought the objective was to seat the GC? Your seating /sizing together if you're bending the bullets. Use a push throught for as cast diameter of not more than .0005 to .001 sizing.

[Tripplebeards]

I tap mine on manually first to try and get them somewhat seated. I just push the GC on with my fingers and tap the base on my table till it looks flush. I end up scraping off part of the base when Doing so. I then scrape off the lead shaving that the GC cut when tapping on with my fingernail or it smears between the GC and base. I then run the boolit through my Lee sizer. PiTA but it works for me. I normally have blisters on my fingers after tapping on acouple hundred this way. If I dont tap them on flush manually first I'll get fliers. I install my GCs over PC so I always struggle with them.

[redneck1]

Attachment 261845

Here you go. I think the photo uploaded sideways. But, you get the picture. No pun intended.

This does the same thing as the NOE tool. You are just using your bullet seating stem instead of a Lyman style top punch.

JM

God , I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who does this .
Luckily I only have two bullets that are difficult to seat checks on

[Tripplebeards]

I think out of all my molds I one have one lee that will allow me to snap on GCs very easily after PCing. All the rest of my molds are a struggle.

[Stephen Cohen]

If your lucky enough to be able to use the correct bullet seating stem for the cast your checking, this will make seating easy by just sitting cast base down on the Lee sizer rod and go for it. You will have to wind the stem down in the seating die to suit the operation. Regards Stephen