Buck13
Member
I've been loading plated bullets for my revolvers for a while, but I don't have much confidence that I'm doing it right. When crimping plated bullets that have a cannelure of no real reduced diameter with a ring of hash marks, can you really get an effective "heavy" crimp for slow powders?
And how do you judge your crimp? With this sort of cannelure, it seems like the crimping force goes up very fast with small downward adjustments of the die, which is no surprise since the case has nowhere to go relative to crimping into a big groove in a cast bullet. Is a caliper measurement of the case mouth reliable, or each time you set the die do you need to pull a bullet to verify that you haven't cut through the plating, or just try to develop a feel for how much ram force it takes to mangle (or not) the plating??
Finally, I would think if you want to crimp into the side of the bullet like this, it would be best to seat to the desired OAL without crimping, then back out the seater plug and crimp without moving the bullet at the same time. Yes or no? I do it as two steps unless I'm doing no more than flattening down the flare or just a tiny bit more.
And how do you judge your crimp? With this sort of cannelure, it seems like the crimping force goes up very fast with small downward adjustments of the die, which is no surprise since the case has nowhere to go relative to crimping into a big groove in a cast bullet. Is a caliper measurement of the case mouth reliable, or each time you set the die do you need to pull a bullet to verify that you haven't cut through the plating, or just try to develop a feel for how much ram force it takes to mangle (or not) the plating??
Finally, I would think if you want to crimp into the side of the bullet like this, it would be best to seat to the desired OAL without crimping, then back out the seater plug and crimp without moving the bullet at the same time. Yes or no? I do it as two steps unless I'm doing no more than flattening down the flare or just a tiny bit more.