Having an issue with bullet seating on a Lee turret

[sheepdog]

I have the 4 hole Lee turret which works like a champ, been happy with. But finding that regardless of dies, boolits or j-boots, cleaning my dies, different disks etc, I have wildly different seating heights.

Now I've locked my dies down tight, and if I raise the ram up very very slow using the same brand brass everytime I can usually get it withing one thousandth of an inch. If I come up normal speed, change brass, or sometimes do nothing different at all I might be four thousandth of an inch high. Trying to seat it again without adjusting dies might help, might do nothing, or might go over a little.

As you can imagine this really slows thigns down and discourages a starting reloader. Any suggestions before I pack it up and ship it off to Lee?

[bedwards]

Have you pulled the floating boolit seating die apart and checked to see if there is a burr or something on the seat causing it to bind? Its just aluminum and not machined all that smooth.


be

[StarMetal]

Simple and often overlooked is your brass all the same length?

Joe

[monadnock#5]

I'm looking into goat entrails here: I see handgun ammo....cases unmeasured....seating AND crimping in the same operation! Am I close??:):(

Nobody likes case trimming (me included), especially on big lots of handgun brass. So try seating and crimping in separate operations. It doesn't add much more time, 10-15 min per 100, and will help get you to the uniformity you seek.

[wallenba]

Possibly tumble lubed boolits with a bit of build-up in seater plug. Gunk interfers with boolit depth, then comes off on boolit, the next one is clean= different depth.

[watkibe]

I'm looking into goat entrails here: I see handgun ammo....cases unmeasured....seating AND crimping in the same operation! Am I close??:):(

Nobody likes case trimming (me included), especially on big lots of handgun brass. So try seating and crimping in separate operations. It doesn't add much more time, 10-15 min per 100, and will help get you to the uniformity you seek.

Seating and crimping separately is the way to go.


wallenba: "Possibly tumble lubed boolits with a bit of build-up in seater plug. Gunk interfers with boolit depth, then comes off on boolit, the next one is clean= different depth. "

I try to have 2 seating dies for cartridges I load with both cast and jacketed. I know I don't have to clean the j-one and I know I do have to clean the cast one. Makes it simpler, and with Lee, affordable.

Lots of good hints here, in goat entrails and otherwise. And be realistic in your expectations: differences of 1-5 thousandths probably will make no difference for most uses.

[largom]

The Lee turret has about .008 to .010 vertical play in the die plate. Based upon the neck tension of your cases you could get a variance in your OAL. The neck tension will vary due to the inconsistant thickness of your case necks. You could increase the neck tension by polishing the expander button, but too much tension is not good for cast boolits. You could also clamp the Lee die plate down with small "C" clamps for your seating operation. As stated above, do not seat and crimp in the same operation.
Hope this helps.

Larry

[AJ Peacock]

Sheepdog,

How are you measuring your length? Are you measuring base to tip, or base to ogive. If you are seating a projectile that has an ogive, that is what the seating die is pushing against. If the projectile's have varying ogive's (most non-match bullets do!), then you are seating based on a spot on the ogive and measuring to the tip of the bullet. If this is the case, you won't get closer than .004" or so in my experience with non-match grade bullets regardless of the press you use.

AJ

[1hole]

Consistancy is the name of the reloading game. That includes consistancy in press operation when seating. Just popping bullets in and immeidately snapping them out almost guarantees OAL variations no matter what press we use.

[Heavy lead]

What kind of boolits are you seating, rn, swc, wc? Most of my reloading is done with some sort of a flat nose, the first thing I do with Lee seaters is file the bullet seater stem flat. If you use the dies as they are this can happen easily as they (Lee seaters) are designed for jacketed bullets and fit a round nose profile better.

[gasboffer]

Four thousandths? How do you measure that?

[sheepdog]

I meant hundreds, my bad. Yes untrimmed brass and crimping & seating in the same step. Seeing the error of my ways now, either trim or seat then FCD.

[monadnock#5]

Please don't get the idea I'm beating on you here sheepdog, 'cause I'm not. Just wanted to make a point.

In HS I was taught to use the decimal system. Tenths, hundredths, thousandths, ten thousandths..... When I went to a job using mics, I found decimals spoken short hand. If I needed to remove .0005, I was told to take 5 tenths off. If I took off .0015 too much, I was told I removed 15 grand too much.

The way the decimal system is used on "paper", and the way it's spoken encourages mistakes, and makes communication difficult.

[mike in co]

if this is the original three post press, originally a 3 hole and now as a 4 hole....the frames flexes!
plain and simple...things move based on how hard you apply pressure to the handle.

i have and still use my 3 hole lee press....but not for accuracy work.


mike

[1hole]

Turret presses do have some die plate movement. Sounds like your answer to great consistancy is to work the lever somewhat slowly during seating. ??

But, the Lee "Dead Length" seater was made to aleviate that problem even more.

[mike in co]

turret presses do have some die plate movement. Sounds like your answer to great consistancy is to work the lever somewhat slowly during seating. ??

But, the lee "dead length" seater was made to aleviate that problem even more.

its not the play on the turret....its the flex in the press from top to biottom

[RP]

something I just wanted to throw out may have nothing to do with it. If you are starting with a fire case size deprime Prime flare and powder drop seat and crimp ? Check to see if your primers are seated to the right depth trash in the primer pocket and primer is not in deep enough will give you diff OAL just a thought.

[Char-Gar]

Been there! Done that with a Lee turret press! I noticed the irregular OAL of the rounds and found out, with the use of a Wilson case guage, the problem was the shoulder of the case (30-06) was being set back inconsistant causing inconsistant headspace on the rounds resulting in inconsistant OAL as well. Not acceptable!!!!

The problem was the slop between the turret and the press body. The bottom of the die was not at the exact same height to the shell holder on every raising of the ram. It did it with three different turrets.

Maybe it was the slop between the turret and the press or the press was flexing as another poster said, I dont know, but I lean toward the slop theory. Yes, it was one of the original three hole models.

Others have noticed the same thing. My solution was to remove the press from service and never buy another Lee press. I was not interested in fixing a crappy press. If a crappy company made and marketed the thing, I am not interested in a crappy fix from the same crappy company. Is that unfare? Well so be it! Life is too short and the world is filled with good quality reloading equipment to have to fix a design defect or keep sending stuff back to customer service because it was crappy from the factory.

I have had a dozen or more presses and scores of die sets and only other defective tool that didn't come from Lee, in 51 years of reloading was a new C-H sizing die in which the factory failed to drill the air vent hole. Two minutes with a drill press cured that and the die is still in service.

I have sent four bullet molds and six or seven dies back to Lee as they were defective in one way or another. I am not including a whole run of 53 custom molds that were not made to spec in this count.

I do continue to buy the collect neck sizing dies from Lee because nothing close is available from another maker, but I had had to send two of these back as well.

[TAWILDCATT]

so how did they shoot.that you have not said.if there pistol they probable wont make a difference.does not make a difference if there is verticle motion.as the press will move to close it.the shell holder will move down and the turret up.
many of you should take a machine shop course.are you using mikes or calipers??
and fit the seating punch to the bullet.
any one that cant get a lee product to work should stick to the more expensive products.