Bullet nose up or down?

[Swede 45]

I have a star lube/sizer on loan..
Does it realy matter if you size nose up or down?

Swede

[HATCH]

If you are feeding it by hand it doesn't matter as long as you can get the punch setup correct.
Keep in mind most punches are flat so they are meant to be nose first.

If using a bullet feeder then it should be nose first so it drops in the die. Base first will work if its a short boolit

[Swede 45]

Thanks.. I´m feeding the bullets by hand..
The top punch that came along with the star are not flat. It´s shaped to fit a pointy SWC and makes ugly (yeah, only cosmetic but annoying) marks on my bullets of other profiles.
I´ll mod it flat and go nose down from now..

[sparky45]

If you have a "Hot Glue Gun" just fill the nose of the punch with the glue, let it set up and then get to work. Worked for me.

[HATCH]

The bullet feeder doesn't clear the boolits if they are base first as they don't drop in the die far enough.
Thats the only reason I said nose down only on the bullet feeder

JB weld will also work.

[MT Chambers]

If you size nose down you have the benefit of the bullet centering itself, doing it base down could lead to the same alignment problems of the Lyman and RCBS type sizers.

[MaLar]

My vote is nose first. I sized some RCBS 300 grn rifle bullets to fit my colt. Base first sent the bullet at an angle through the lubrisizer.
Nose first = perfect bullets. I think the Lee sizers my work this way, just ordered on in .311"

[bobthenailer]

Either way can be done , however i have found the nose first to be the superior in every way ! with the added savings of only needing one top punch per caliber.

[HeavyMetal]

While the Star will "work" either Base or Nose first I did some serious accuracy testing with the 45 auto ( Bar-Sto Match Barrel) about 20 years ago and found nose sizing produced a huge difference in group size!

I also found weighing as cast boolits, to sort out extreme weight difference's, also helped group size's tremendously.

For that reason I always nose size, currently running a batch of Lyman 457122 HP's through a custom Lathesmith sizer die and they pop out the bottom both sized and all three lube grooves filled with no lube wasted on the nose or the base!

So nose size and shoot better!