GW,
I agree with your comment about the FCD. It does make sense and yes I used them for years when (and that is the key point) when I was loading a lot of Rem Brass with Rem and Winchester bulk bullets. I used to buy jacketed bullets en bulk purchases. I would try to buy 2000 to 4000 lot bulk buys but around 2002 to 2004 those just seem to get harder and harder to find for me. It was around that time I started to switch over to Starline brass that I use almost exclusively now for pistol (except things like 357 Maximum where only Rem brass is available).
I then went through a period of Starline and Jacketeds and the FCD was just starting to tag the edge of the bullet upon sizing. Not enough to make an impact but enough to be noticeable.
As I no longer was able to buy large quantities of jacketeds at once, I tried Berry's (where I invented the slang "getting Berry-ed" which is not a good thing. I next started playing with Lasercasts more and more. They were cheap, bulk quantities, hard as heck and worked well in many guns. Unfortunately that lead (yes bad pun) to Starline, Lasercast lead and FCD's which is in general a combination for getting a bullet resized. What I saw as that guns that were accurate with Jacketeds now were not as accurate. This led to experimentation and eventually for the revolvers dropping all FCD's for redding profile crimp dies. They work great! Accuracy came right back.
Over time though, Lasercast got enough of a following that they raised their rates and the price differential between jacketed, Lasercast and other lead bullets became to much for me to swallow, so I searched around for more reasonable prices.
MBC and Penn came to the forefront. Penn is probably closer to Lasercast but MBC gave me better service. So I switched over to MBC and as I started to reload the autoloaders after the great primer scare of 08 to 10, I found that the FCD was causing problems. The clunk,clunk and clunk of resizing the lead bullet, startline brass on the way in and out of the die. A few range trips and I found that this was a problem.
The key was my new 38 super. I bought a Les Baer 1.5" PII 38 super. Great gun. I ordered up supplies and could not get an FCD so I just loaded a bunch with out it. Great accuracy fun round, lots of fun and 1300 fps and a 135lead MBC was nothing to shake a fist at. Finally, as part of my routine ordering I get a 38 super FCD. I then immediately dropped it in and started loading with it. The hard squeezing of the lead and the brass immediately returned. Since I have not built up a huge stash of 38 super yet, these loads got out to the range quick. Accuracy went from 50 shot groups in the 1 to 1.5" range to 3 to 4". Dang, what happened?
This led to testing, testing led to research, research led to discovery and discovery led to parking the FCD's in the spare die pile.
So there is the history of how I went form the FCD being a good thing to the FCD's sitting on the top shelf along with the Lyman "M" dies, hornady seaters, Dillon die sets, powder checker dies,spare revolver taper crimp dies, etc.....
I admit it. I experiment a lot, I make mistakes. In the long run, the FCD's were a bad choice "for me" but at the time they made sense. I bought, I learned and I moved on to something better. I can guarantee that in a few years, I doubt I will be using the exact setup I am doing now. I like to try and improve and do things better. That is the fun of the sport.
