Peter M. Eick
Member
I have been using FCD's for years and they seemed like a good idea at the time. I finally got around to actually testing them more and more recently and as I have lately switched to lead bullets, my FCD's are getting parked.
The problem I have found is that with thick brass, lead bullets and conventional Lee FCD's with the carbide sizing ring, I was getting a bit of resizing of the bullet every time I pushed a round into the die. This always bothered me so over the last few months I went on a research project to sort it out.
Like I said the die basically is resizing the loaded round with a lead bullet. After measuring and pulling a bunch of bullets, I found I was commonly losing about 0.003 to 0.008" by doing this. It did not seem like much, but what I did note was that the bullet pull was dropping. This lead to a bit of metals research where I learned that lead is basically a "dead" metal and once sized it does not "practically" spring back. So, once the carbide ring sized the brass and the bullet, the bullet now is smaller and the brass sprung back a small bit. How much, is hard to say, but with a scale, I was losing about 5 to 10 lbs of bullet pull after FCD use.
I had already experimented with my sig 210's and shown that FCD vs. no FCD was good for about a 1 to 2" worse target for 50 shots at 15 yrds in 9mm. I had not done the same for other calibers. In 10mm it was less for me, about an inch worse, 40 was more close to 2" worse and 45 it was not as noticeable.
So my approach now is simplified. For all rounds I seat in one step but no crimp is applied on my pro2000.
For revolver rounds I use a redding profile crimper to crimp the case and reduce the flare. These work really well.
For straight walled pistol rounds, I seat in a RCBS seater crimper die and now I have either Redding or RCBS second taper crimp seater die with the seater stem removed. This has given me better accuracy and easy of adjustment in setting the dies.
For bottleneck cases in autoloaders and my 30/30's I still use the FCD collet style crimper. This one works quite well ont he 30/30's, 357 Sig or 7.62Nato rounds.
So, it has been an interesting road of experimentation and learning. I have gone from FCD's on every round to practically only 2. Along the way I have learned a great deal about accuracy, shooting and reloading. I guess it was well worth the investment in a bunch of FCD's. I will keep them around becasue they are good for de-glocking brass but otherwise in storage.
Last comment. This is only true of thick brass and lead bullets. If you load thin brass (R&P comes to mind) and jacketed bullets, you probably will never see the issue and I did not when I still loaded jacketed's. I do that rarely now so the FCD's had to go.
The problem I have found is that with thick brass, lead bullets and conventional Lee FCD's with the carbide sizing ring, I was getting a bit of resizing of the bullet every time I pushed a round into the die. This always bothered me so over the last few months I went on a research project to sort it out.
Like I said the die basically is resizing the loaded round with a lead bullet. After measuring and pulling a bunch of bullets, I found I was commonly losing about 0.003 to 0.008" by doing this. It did not seem like much, but what I did note was that the bullet pull was dropping. This lead to a bit of metals research where I learned that lead is basically a "dead" metal and once sized it does not "practically" spring back. So, once the carbide ring sized the brass and the bullet, the bullet now is smaller and the brass sprung back a small bit. How much, is hard to say, but with a scale, I was losing about 5 to 10 lbs of bullet pull after FCD use.
I had already experimented with my sig 210's and shown that FCD vs. no FCD was good for about a 1 to 2" worse target for 50 shots at 15 yrds in 9mm. I had not done the same for other calibers. In 10mm it was less for me, about an inch worse, 40 was more close to 2" worse and 45 it was not as noticeable.
So my approach now is simplified. For all rounds I seat in one step but no crimp is applied on my pro2000.
For revolver rounds I use a redding profile crimper to crimp the case and reduce the flare. These work really well.
For straight walled pistol rounds, I seat in a RCBS seater crimper die and now I have either Redding or RCBS second taper crimp seater die with the seater stem removed. This has given me better accuracy and easy of adjustment in setting the dies.
For bottleneck cases in autoloaders and my 30/30's I still use the FCD collet style crimper. This one works quite well ont he 30/30's, 357 Sig or 7.62Nato rounds.
So, it has been an interesting road of experimentation and learning. I have gone from FCD's on every round to practically only 2. Along the way I have learned a great deal about accuracy, shooting and reloading. I guess it was well worth the investment in a bunch of FCD's. I will keep them around becasue they are good for de-glocking brass but otherwise in storage.
Last comment. This is only true of thick brass and lead bullets. If you load thin brass (R&P comes to mind) and jacketed bullets, you probably will never see the issue and I did not when I still loaded jacketed's. I do that rarely now so the FCD's had to go.