Is it The Lee Dies Or...?

[Uncle R.]

I have a set of Lee dies in .375 Winchester. It is pretty near impossible to seat a bullet straight in the case. I've been using the 220 gr. Hornady and no matter how careful I am or what technique I use the bullet will be visibly crooked. No need for my RCBS case gauge to check runout - I can SEE the bulge on the brass at the bottom of the seated bullet varies as it goes around the cae.
<
Accuracy to date has been just what you'd expect from ammo with visibly crooked bullets - minute of paper plate with the loads I've tried so far.
<
I suspect that the sizing die is a little extreme - and I suspect that there's a lot of clearance in the seater that allows the bullet to tip. I had this problem years ago with a set of Lyman dies in .44-40 - they would size the cases WAY down to a very noticeable bottleneck configuration and then seating the bullet left the case neck bulged visibly larger than the mid section. It made some funny-looking "hourglass" ammo, the bullets were almost always crooked as well, and they shot like it too. That experience soured me on Lyman dies for a long time.
<
Cheez! You'd think that seating a relatively long bullet into an almost straight case would be pretty easy to design dies for! So - what's going on with my .375 dies? Is this a "Lee" problem or am I doing something wrong?
<
Uncle R.

[Pepe Ray]

SWAG!
Check your case wall dimensions. Sounds to me like a very common problem called "thick'n thin".
Pepe Ray

[45 2.1]

Lee has a very short expander in that set. The expander is a simple turned piece in mine. Have someone make a longer expander with a neck flare to fit your boolit for it and you will have better luck.

[Uncle R.]

Lee has a very short expander in that set. The expander is a simple turned piece in mine. Have someone make a longer expander with a neck flare to fit your boolit for it and you will have better luck.

Would a Lyman M-Die do that for me?

[Dale53]

I did exactly that (longer expander with a neck flare) for my 45/70 and 40/65 BPCR's. It totally solved the problem.

Another problem that was taken care of by carefully specifying desired dimensions - I used soft lead bullets (30/1 lead/tin) in the black powder guns so wanted the necks expanded minimally so as not to distort the carefully cast bullets when seated. I got the best results when the expander was the same size as the bullet to no smaller than .001" below bullet size. With the brass "spring back" this gave me .001"-.002" neck tension. This was tight enough for the mechanical requirements, gave good ignition and burning, and did NOT distort the soft bullets. I seated the bullets into the lands. Accuracy is outstanding from 100-600 yards (as far as I competed).

The Lee expander is especially rewarding to customize as it requires no chasing of threads - just turn the required diameters.

Dale53

[1hole]

Uncle R. : "Would a Lyman M-Die do that for me? "

Yep. It's perhaps the best expander design out there, for both cast AND jacketed bullets.