Lee 38-55 dies Issues

[odfairfaxsub]

Well sizes the cases and expands great. Went to seat a bullet two issues 1) bullet seat stem made hard impressions into the bullet and 2) crimp ring scrapes the feature of the bullet nose which is of diameter (.380 dia).

Solution I took the stem out and took a couple of my bullets already casted and put valve grind compound and shaped the stem into a close copy of my bullet and rounded the edges w a 44 mag copper bullet. Also the crimp ring remedy was to use a bore mop and valve compound soaked it, worked it on my drill for awhile then cleaned it up... took a dummy loaded case w valve compound on the bullet and turned it by hand till it felt free...cleaned the bullet off and put more compound and twisted it by handtil it felt free again. Cleaned everything off w engine degreaser and soapy water, ballistol it and baked on a low temp and reassembled

[jimkim]

I use the same top punch, that I use to size with, in my Lee 30-30 seating die. It works pretty good.

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[odfairfaxsub]

Hmmmm you know now that you mention it it did look like a top punch when I was handling it

[EDG]

The .38-55 is one of the worst offenders due to the wide variety of possible bullet diameters. I have 3 sets of dies - Lee, RCBS, and RCBS Cowboy dies. Only the Cowboy die seater was large enough to work with .381 dia bullets.
None of the die sets had an expander large enough. I had to use a custom expander. To avoid excessive sizing when the large .381 bullets are used I used a RCBS .38-55 trim die. The neck and mouth of the trim die is .010 larger than the RCBS FL sizer.

[odfairfaxsub]

Yeah just realized how many quirks there are among equipment and the such. Bullets are easy to make correct for the gun, the brass heck almost any brass can be work (at least from starline I hear Winchester 38-55 brass is too thick to chamber maybe another quirk), dies quirk, Lee makes no sizer but makes a mold quirk quirk had to buy one from noe, yada yada. We will make it work just it’s not a beginners game due to me knowing how to discover things along the way and finally discovering these oddities now. Well I’ll get back to you all when I seat a powder coated bullet in the shells.

[EDG]

One of the biggest pains with the .38-55 is the chamber vs the groove diameter.
In many rifles the chamber is too small to chamber a cartridge loaded with a bullet of proper size for a .380 bore.
I have a .38-55 that will not work with the .0095 WW brass but will work with the .0075 thick Starline brass.