Lets discuss the topic of Roll Crimping.
I posted this on my "Old A5" thread but it needs it's own thread as there is more than a little to be learned on this subject.
OK guys: Since I am waiting for my gun to reappear I decided I would load some of my new STI Slugs.
I went down the roll crimping rat hole today and reloaded 5 once fired Federal Slug Hulls that were previously Roll Crimped. I did one Fiocchi hull last night but it kind of sucked so I used some Feds I had collected for today's excursion.
I used the BPI 12 ga. Roll Crimper that I have had sitting in the box for several years now. I did the set up on my Milling machine simply because I could control the speed down to zero RPM's if necessary. I started at 150 RPM's and it worked good so I left it there.
I did the first operations of the loading on my Pacific DL266. That was depriming/sizing, re-priming and dropping powder., then to seat the STI Slug/Sabot combo I used a wad guide ( A MEC I think)I had in my Lee Loader Kit with my little Sinclair Arbor Press to shove the whole mess thru the mouth of the hull. No way was it going in without a wad guide. I had to use a .40 S&W case as a spacer to get the slug past the the fingers on the wad guide.
Then back to the press to seat the wad and apply 40-50 lbs of pressure on it.
Then over to the mill for the Roll Crimp.
Once I figured out how to hold onto the hull and lining it up with the crimp tool, I just started the spindle and started running it down. The stop was high so I keep lowering it until the crimp looked complete.
I went back to the first one on the left and gave it a little more after I was done with the other 4 all ended up at 2-5/16" +/-.01-.15. They all have a decent taper on them so they should feed smoothly in the A5.
One thing I did that just seemed appropriate was to wipe some Vaseline on the inside of the crimp tool. It worked and whereas the first one didn't look perfect the other 4 did and I am reasonably happy with the outcome. But since I have no idea what I am doing I will defer to you's guys for constructive criticism.
See pics below.
So what do you think?
Randy