What should the da of powder funnel expanders be?

[ioon44]

I have measured 3 Dillon F funnel expanders at .351", .3525" and .355". Was having the problem of the boolit swaging to .354" on seating with 6-2-92 alloy.

What do other F funnels measure?

I load .357" da boolits in 9mm.


I tried to ask Dillon about this measurement but only got B.S. from the guy I talked to. Most of the time Dillon is great on Customer Service.

[gloob]

I just tuned a custom plug for my 0.4010-0.4015 bullets (MBC, advertised at 0.401"). I found that my expander worked where I wanted it at right around 0.0005-0.001" smaller than bullet diameter, and no more. (I screwed up by going too small, first try, but luckily the plug was long enough for me to try, again.) Of course, on a 40SW/10mm case, there is a LOT of case neck to hold the bullet. So my expander plug is a whopping 0.4005-0.4010" - bigger than a jacketed bullet! I was surprised how much bigger it ended up compared to the standard Lyman/NOE 40SW plug, which is set to 0.398"!

I'm not sure what the F funnel is, exactly. But the bigger the better, IMO. I don't think anyone makes 'em quite big enough for softer alloy bullets, out of the box. You might consider buying the F funnel for 357 and giving that a try.

[ioon44]

The Dillon F funnel is for 9mm, a Dillon D funnel is for .38/.357.

[DaveInFloweryBranchGA]

If you're using your own cast boolits, I suggest getting a custom made "M-die style" powder funnel made for those particular calibers. You can find someone to do that on this forum and you'll be much happier with the results. In my case, the boolits seated better with the custom stem than they did with the Dillon funnel and did not get swaged down in size by seating in a too small case.