Fat30 sticks in seating stem

[StanDahl]

My Lee Fat30 boolits stick in my Lee 7.65 seating die so that as I raise the press handle, the die grabs the bullet and pulls it back out some before releasing it. OAL becomes tough to regulate, and this may not be related, but concentricity is atrocious. The bullets look like they are way off center. The neck in the 7.65 x54 is really short, and not much of a guide, but I haven't had this problem with the 314299. My Gussymeter shows that the brass is not quite round, but not nearly off to the degree of the bullet in the loaded cartridge.

Since it's a flat nosed bullet, I tried inverting the seating stem, but that didn't help. I don't want to modify the seating stem permanently. What can be done? Thanks, Stan

[NuJudge]

I had this trouble with the 6.5mm "Cruise Missile." What I did was flair the neck, then use a seating die for a much larger caliber, the stem being for a flat-nosed bullet. Even without the support of the die around the neck, concentricity looked good, using the Mk I eyeball.

CDD

[44man]

Lee dies are so cheap I would lap it out.
The primary cause of boolit runout is the expander ball and sizer. If the neck is sized too much and it takes a lot of force to pull the expander, you will get bent brass. There is no support to the brass as the expander is pulled and any difference in thickness or temper will shift the force and pull the case off center.
The second problem is a cheap die that does not support the case during boolit seating.
It sounds like you must lap the sizer and use a larger expander for a fat boolit. You will have such a tight neck with the normal dies that you not only bend the case but can size the boolit as it is seated and lose the advantage of the larger boolit.
If the boolit fits snug in a fired case, I would not size. Just flare a little and seat the boolit to contact the rifling. If you have trouble with boolits moving in the magazine, then you need some sizing or a good crimp.
You might want to look into the Redding size die that uses collars that you can get different sizes of to match what you have. No expander needed but for cast I would flare a little.

[StanDahl]

Fired, unsized (Norma) cases allow this 0.314” Fat30 bullet to slip right in. Resized cases do not, the gas check is just able to perch on the neck but not enter any further. I resize using Lee full-length dies, and use a Lyman 31L M die to expand.

After flaring/expansion, the bullet can be hand-seated to the top of the gas check, but no further. With this recent trial, some of the bullets were able to spin in the case neck after seating until crimped, so overly tight neck tension doesn’t seem to be a problem, possibly the opposite. I had this same problem with loose bullets using a 32 S&W sizer a while back, before the M die came along, but that was with a slightly skinnier 314299.

While seating, the brass is able to wiggle a bit - I’d say about 15/1000” at the head. I can’t see in there very well, but the neck seems to be well supported. I tried a much blunter seater stem from a 32-mag, and that solved the sticking problem, but it has a T at the top that doesn't allow it to ride up into the plug at the top of the die, so the die can't be set high enough to overcome this. Concentricity still sucks with this set-up. If I had another of those stems, I could trim that T off and use the 32 mag stem, or if I was handy that way, make another, and be happy.

[garandsrus]

StanDahl,

I have only had a gas checked bullet that was loose in the case one time. It turned out that the gas check diameter was bigger than the bullet diameter. This caused the gas check to expanding the case neck as it was seated. You might want to measure the gas check on the bullet and the bullet to see if they are the same size.

If you load a bullet without the gas check I would guess that it will have plenty of neck tension. If so, it indicates a sizing inconsistency with the bullet and gas check.

I couldn't figure out what was going on for a while...

John

[StanDahl]

I forgot to mention that I did measure the gc vs the bullet shank and there is almost no difference in diameter, depending on how hard I squeeze on the caliper. (No one ever taught me how to use a simple 1 - 6" dial caliper, but I assume that you aren't supposed to put much pressure on the sample for best results.) I did not anneal these gas checks, but I've been doing a lot of that lately, and probably should for this bullet. Stan

[9.3X62AL]

Stan--

I have a similar problem with my RCBS 303 British seater die--the case neck area isn't the problem, the gallery/sleeve that guides/supports the boolit is likely at fault. No boolit/bullet over .312" in diameter will pass through this area of the seater die.

The real answer is to lap out about a .003" radius on this portion of my seater die to accomdate the .316" boolits the rifle's dimensions require. In the meantime, I've used a 8 x 57 seater die to seat the still-undersized-but-better-shooting .314" Fat Thirties.

The full-diameter shank of your #314299 might not be encountering the guidance sleeve before being seated to your selected length--this is one telling advantage of bore-rider designs under these conditions.

[mosin9130]

Stan an Al--

I solved a similar problem I had with old LEE 6,5 Carcano dies (made for .264" bullets whilst my rifle and boolits are .268") making on lathe a new larger expander for the sizer and enlarging the hole of seater (in Lee dies is very short) with a rod and sandpaper untill a bullet can pass through freely. Remember to make rotate the die (I use my lathe for it) and move slowly up and down the rod to keep the roundness of the hole.

[Char-Gar]

Sometime back Lyman sold a PA (precision alighment) seating die that contained a sliding internal collar for the straight line seating of bullets. They were made big enough to seat oversized cast bullets.

I used either the .303 Brit or 30-40 Lyman PA die (it is the same die, with a different label) to seat .315 Fatter 30 bullets without a hitch.

These things show up on Ebay and I bought about a half dozen in various calibers a couple of years ago when a mess showed up.

[StanDahl]

Deputy Al wins this one - his suggestion to lap the seating die did the job! I noticed that a bullet wouldn't go through the seater, after one got grabbed and would not come out again. After lapping, the bullet no longer sticks in the die while seating and the OAL is more consistant. Note: MORE consistant, not VERY consistant. I also flipped the seating stem around so that the flat is facing down to meet the FN bullet - that's flat-nosed, not f'n bullet.

Next, when I resize these, I'll be looking for what 44man mentioned - an overly tight sizer die. That may need to be lapped out too to get better case concentricity. I still have that problem with this bullet. Thanks all, Stan