Lee Factory Crimp Dies....?

[3006guns]

I don't have a mold that drops boolits big enough for my 7.65 Mauser, .303 Brit and 7.7mm Jap, so I beagled the mold. Now they're about .003" larger than groove diameter, unsized, which is fine as I'm going to shoot them as dropped. I made up a dummy round in 7.65 and colored the neck with a magic marker and it chambered with no marks on the neck so it's looking good.

My problem is that I need to lightly crimp and don't have anything but regular rifle dies which push the boolit down in the case, even with the seating plug backed off. I'm looking at the Lee Factory Crimp Die as a possible solution but it functions using case length. The 7.65 is almost identical to the 7.7mm Jap, but shorter. Is there any way I could make it work?

[462]

"...I need to lightly crimp..."

Is that because the boolits are too loose, you because you want a crimp? The only rifle cartridge I crimp -- using a Lee factory crimp die -- is .30-30. With a combination of the correct neck tension -- neck sizing -- and fat boolits, I don't crimp.

[3006guns]

Sigh...........you're right of course. I was hoping to try this little experiment without having to buy a custom neck die or expanding plug. The boolits as cast are dropping at .317 to .3175. Sounds big for the calibers I listed, but the bores all slug at .3145 and the mold was dropping at .315 before I beagled it. Accuracy was uninspiring to say the least, so .3165-.317 would be good, but nobody offers a neck size/expanding plug in that range.

Just for giggles I'll probably use a .315 sizing die (biggest I've got) to seat the gas check without sizing the boolit, hand lube and seat, then shoot. If it shows promise I'll take the next step of figuring out what size dies I need.

Edit: Problem solved. Seating one of the beagled boolits in an unsized case neck worked, but it was "just slightly" loose. It suddenly occured to me that my 310 tool had a .313 expanding plug, so I neck sized, expanded and seated a boolit. The neck tension was about as perfect as you could want, so I pulled and measured the boolit. The dimensions hadn't changed so there was no swaging effect and they're finally big enough to fit the bore. I'll lube and gas check a few then take them out to the range tomorrow. Hopefully my groups will shrink somewhat from "minute of barn door" to something acceptable!

[462]

Sounds great.