.223 Reloading Problem

[Saint]

I will be picking up my AR next week but I have slowly been pulling together the reloading equipment and today I tried my hand at loading. Not having the greatest luck at the moment. I am using new Remington brass and Remington FMJ bullets. I am using RCBS dies. The problem I am having is that when I seat the bullets I am having to pull the lever too hard, then when the bullet finally seats the case mouth has opened up so much that the bullet just falls in the case and I have to resize the mouth again. I sized all of the brass before I started just to be safe. I have reloaded many other calibers before but I have never had this type of problem, normally I can feel the bullet sliding smoothly into the case. Can anybody tell me what I am doing wrong?

[billyb]

Did you chamfer the mouths of the new brass? Difficult seating will result if not. I do not know why the mouths opened up on seating.

[Saint]

Wow who would have thought that dies come with instructions.............drrrrrrrrrrr. The chamfering was part of it but it also seems that the RCBS die I got has the seating plug adjusted all the way in, it needed to be backed out about a full inch. I had the plug so far down into the die body that the bullet had no support and it was going in at an angle. When I adjusted it I used a factory .223 round and turned the die in until the seating plug touched the top of the bullet but i didn't turn in all the way to the crimp shoulder as I should have.

[stubshaft]

So you need to back off of the seating stem, put a factory load onto the ram and raise it. The adjust the die body until you can feel it touch the case (add a little more for the crimp). THEN, screw in the seating stem until it touches the bullet.