223 Seating Issues

[cowboyarcher]

Hi All,

I am having some troubles lately loading some 223 ammo. I am trying to load 60 gr Hornady HP flat base bullets into chamferred mixed commercial cases. What appears to be happening is the the seater is catching the HP and attempts to seat the bullet at an angle? It is causing a deformation of the point of the bullet and bulging the neck and seating the bullets at an angle.

I am using a standard RCBS die set in a Dillon 550b. I just ran 200 60 gr SP's (again, flat base) through it at the same setting so I am really confused as to what is causing the issue.

Any ideas? Pic are as good as I can get with my phone, will try to get better photos later this afternoon/evening. . .

Thanks all and God bless you!

Adam

 

[MudRunner2005]

Check those bullets with your calipers to make sure they're accurate. They might be too large diameter. Looks weird. As for the bending of the sideways seating, that's probably just a side-effect from smashing that bullet down into the undersized neck. Make sure everything you are using is correct.

Other than that, I have no clue what could be going on, unless your die is too close to the shellholder, in which case, backing it up 1/4 turn will usually help to stop over-compressing the loads and bending the necks sideways... That could help.

I'm out of ideas. Maybe some of this can help with your issue. Other than that, I havd no idea.

 

[boomtube]

"What appears to be happening is the the seater is catching the HP and attempts to seat the bullet at an angle?"

The seating plug in most seaters is signficantly smaller than the bullet guide section of the seater. If the bullet guide section is much too large the bullets will tilt excessively no matter what the user does. If the mouth of a hollow point hits the edge of the seating cavity a tilted bullet has no chance of properly aligning with the case neck.

Lee's bullet seater guides seem to be tighter than other conventional die sets and their floating seater plug will self align to the bullets.

 

[nonnieselman]

I hate loading Flat base's on the dillon..
I did some for a friend and made him use a VLD reamer on each peice of brass. No more problems after that.

If the adjusting the die doesnt fix it, try a Hornady seater. They have the floating guide and it helps. I use it on 6.8spc using flat base bullets and it works great!

 

[BuckyFan69]

+1 to Booms post.

Was having the same issue with a Lee die in 22-250 using 55gn FBPSP's. Called Lee and they sent me a larger diameter seating plug. Problem solved.

 

[cowboyarcher]

Thanks for the tips fellas, I'll check the mentioned items. It may be Thursday before I can get back to it sadly. . .

 

[tnek13]

Check to see if the seating plug hits on the ogive or if the head length of the bullet is too long for the plug and the tip hit first. Or the other responses? Good luck. I had a problem with 80 A-Max and went with a Redding Comp die

 

[Reloader222]

A Foster Benchrest Seater Die is 1/2 the price of a Redding, but does the job just as good.

 

[cowboyarcher]

Well I made it out this afternoon and got to work with things a little more.

First I reset the seater die to make sure it was not crimping the cases. Then I removed the seater plug from the die and saw that it had a fairly thick lip around the edge, so I took my chamfer tool to it to make the bullet transition into the plug as gentle as possible. I made sure to chamfer the cases as smoothly and consistently as I could.

From there I decided to load single cases at a time in order to get a feel for what was going on in the sizing die. I could feel the bullets start to seat crooked as before, but this time the seating plug sheared off a small portion of the HP and the bullet seated as normal.

I went ahead and loaded to end of my powder supplies as these were mostly just plinking rounds, and i was almost out of powder. . .

Given that, does it still sounds like I need a new seating, and perhaps sizing die? Which set would you recommend for FB bullets? I have a bunch left and FB's are fairly common in the .224 bullets so it makes sence to get something that will work better. . .

 

[SidecarFlip]

First off, I'm not fond of a Dillon press except for straight wall pistol cases (I have one for that btw). I haven't tried to load rifle brass on it for a long time.

I don't get in a hurry so I use Rockchucker single stage and I load tons of 223's for myself and friends, boatails, flat base, mostly Hornady projectiles but I use thre RCBS Competition die set with their Competition bullet seater. It's front load and the seater plug self aligns. I always just normally chamfer the case mouths, no VLD..... and no issues.

One nice thing about the RCBS comp seater is not only does it front load, you can buy one micrometer head and just buy the seater bases for around 11 bucks for any caliber. Mine is very accurate, very repeatable and easy to use.

I may FL and neck size bottleneck cases with Redding bushing dies but all my seating is done with the RCBS.