New to reloading from the UK

[blarby]

This will lead your bore like crazy, since bullet fit is critical in cast lead applications. I have picked up orphan seating dies, removed the seating stem, and use them as crimp dies.

Thats good advice right there !

I personally prefer a good roll crimp on my cast revolver bullets over the lee FCD- which I do like for jacketed hunting loads.

Until you are more experienced, I would recommend seating and crimping in seperate steps, so that if something goes wrong you can easily backtrack to the step you didn't get quite right.

Once you have more experience and know how it works, you can seat and crimp in the same step and get great results- but it requires much finer adjustment, and case length uniformity is absolutely critical if you don't want to deform bullets.

 

[Elkins45]

Hmmm, just been looking at the press again, it seems the dies are out of alignment with the ram. The die holder clicks into position at each stage, but is slightly off. Tried to get it on video...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/39aqzqkpz8ajxhj/VIDEO0020.3gp

That's nothing to worry about. In fact, it's actually an advantage in that the turret has enough play that it will self-center the dies in relation to the case. Also, if you look carefully I think what you're seeing isn't so much a case that isn't vertically aligned so much as a case that is just slightly tilted in the shellholder because the casehead isn't perfectly perpendicular to the body. My normal practice when loading straight walled cases with any press is to guide the case mouth with my left hand while raising the ram. If you were loading bottlenecked cases you probably wouldnt even notice it.

 

[Furious Pilgrim]

Good to hear!

So, would I be better off backing off the seating/crimping die, so that it just seats the bullet, and then using the factory crimp die for the crimp? Maybe backing it off slightly so it doesn't crimp too much?
Or, just use the seating/crimping die ad leave out the factory crimp for the time being?

So glad I found this website, somewhere where people put up with my inexperienced mumblings

 

[Blue68f100]

I'm not a fan of the LFCD. I do not even own one. With lead they can resize your bullets and you will loose neck tension.

I think in your case it might be better if you back off your seating die and reset it like you were just starting out. They way I set up the die is first get the OAL where i want it. Since you will be doing a roll crimp I would pick a piece of brass that is on the long side if your not going to trim brass. I like to see about 1 thumb nail thickness of the cannalure. This way you will rolling the crimp into the top of the grove. If your too long you can buckle the case. Once you have that set back off the seating stem and start running the die body down to do the roll crimp. Once your have it where you want it, lock it down. Then run the seating stem down till it contacts the bullet and lock down. Your dies are now set ready to run.

Since you will be doing the roll crimp forget about the OAL actual value. You always load to the cannalure. Yes there can be some variation between mfg. You do not always have to crimp too, it all depends on the load and gun.

 

[Elkins45]

So glad I found this website, somewhere where people put up with my inexperienced mumblings

Americans just love an English accent

Seriously, I love THR too. It's a great place to learn. Since you are beginning to shoot cast bullets then you might also want to visit http://castboolits.gunloads.com/. I have learned an incredible amount about the idiosyncrasies of cast lead projectiles from this site. There are quite a few shooter from the UK on cast boolets as well.

 

[John C]

If I were in your shoes, I'd skip the carbide FCD and seat/crimp in one operation. At least until you can find a lone seating/crimp die and add it to your die set.

The carbide FCD works great for jacketed ammo, but is big trouble with cast lead bullets. Keep your FCD for jacketed.

As an experiment, and if you have access to a micrometer, you can mic your cast bullets prior to seating and crimping. Then pull the bullets and mic them again. That will tell you the diameter of the bullets going down the bore.

-John