Smithy
01-07-2015, 06:19 PM
I'm Bringing some of my SASS days and equipment along for the ride on my smokeless reloading. I chose the tumble lube bullets not to tumble lube them, but for the bullet with the closest full length bearing surface. A surface with a bunch of cracks in it I suppose, but full length nonetheless. What I did in SASS was to cast the bullet and size it a thousandth or two under size. I'd then roll it in Corbin's HC-2 knurling tool making the entire surface diamond pointed and patterned. The knurling process adds a few thousandths back to the bullet diameter so the bullet at this stage will be larger than its as cast diameter. This allowed an incredible amount of lube (pan lubing) to adhere to the bullet. I'd then resize the bullet to a thousandth oversize just like most cast bullet shooters do. I then have a full bearing bullet that is 50% bullet and 50% lube. It worked very well with my black powder loads and I want to continue the practice. My SASS bullet however was of regular design and not the tumble lube type so now I'm left with the question.
If loading a revolver round up to and including a 44 magnum where a good solid crimp is necessary, and the bullet you have has no crimp groove, what do you crimp it in? Do you go ahead of all the bearing surface and crimp on a part of the truncated cone? Or do you put it just about where it would have been and then crank like a good thing? I guess that the latter is a bit different with my bullets because remember its only 50% lead, so maybe the brass would force its way into the side of the bullet and not be a problem? I'm just not really sure without running a few through and seeing if it worked or not? Any advice would be appreciated. Smithy.
If loading a revolver round up to and including a 44 magnum where a good solid crimp is necessary, and the bullet you have has no crimp groove, what do you crimp it in? Do you go ahead of all the bearing surface and crimp on a part of the truncated cone? Or do you put it just about where it would have been and then crank like a good thing? I guess that the latter is a bit different with my bullets because remember its only 50% lead, so maybe the brass would force its way into the side of the bullet and not be a problem? I'm just not really sure without running a few through and seeing if it worked or not? Any advice would be appreciated. Smithy.