Out of reloading the last 100 rounds I experienced this 3 times. Starting to piss me off. Any ideas? The bullet was not jammed or rammed --felt nothing peculiar as I stroked the press --no unusual resistance.
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Tip retracting issue...
- Thread starter Samuel Whittemore
- Start date
Take a look at your seating stem. You may need to modify it to contact closer to the ogive. There's always the JB weld method for getting a better, more uniform contact area.
I’m uncomfortable with the title of this thread and the description of the problem in post 1. 
Is it me or you have a bunch of rolled up copper shavings at the case mouth?
Your seater stem is not right. The meplat should be touching nothing but air.
Your seater stem is not right. The meplat should be touching nothing but air.
check out this page from Berger
bergerbullets.com
It is the same thing happening where the stem is pushing on the end of the bullet instead of the body (typically at the ogive)
I use mostly Whidden dies and have had to get the VLD seater stem for a couple calibers.
Do I need VLD Seating Stems?
When loading a Very Low Drag (VLD) bullet or a hybrid bullet, we recommend that you use a VLD seating stem to ensure load consistency.
bergerbullets.com
It is the same thing happening where the stem is pushing on the end of the bullet instead of the body (typically at the ogive)
I use mostly Whidden dies and have had to get the VLD seater stem for a couple calibers.
I’m uncomfortable with the title of this thread and the description of the problem in post 1.
Triggered are we now? lolol
5 Techniques to Heal Your Emotional Triggers
Emotional triggers are wounds that need to heal.
www.psychologytoday.com
These might help.. however come to think of of the title again --the Lollipops might intesify the trigger situation. Just focus your mental image on the lollipop and....
Nothing else
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Take a look at the stem. If it's shallow, chuck it up in a drill press and drill out a good bit of depth, next use some valve lapping compound and a bullet in a drill to profile the stem, that ought to solve your issue if its the stem pushing on the tip.
Usually I only have that issue when it's cold.
I have nothing productive to add
I have nothing productive to add
If you look closer at your picture you can see all of the tips are flattened. If you compare them to unseated projectiles they should be more of a rounded shape.
As others have suggested inspect the inside of your seating stem, may have part of a tip or other debris stuck in it, or it just may need modified to fit.
As others have suggested inspect the inside of your seating stem, may have part of a tip or other debris stuck in it, or it just may need modified to fit.
Thanks..... Haven't got the drill press to modify it so I'll check it out buying onecheck out this page from Berger
Do I need VLD Seating Stems?
When loading a Very Low Drag (VLD) bullet or a hybrid bullet, we recommend that you use a VLD seating stem to ensure load consistency.
It is the same thing happening where the stem is pushing on the end of the bullet instead of the body (typically at the ogive)
I use mostly Whidden dies and have had to get the VLD seater stem for a couple calibers.
Oh holy crap! You're 100% right!!!... I took out the seating die and and sat a bullet in --it hits!
Update --no. Wait.
See pics
They all have flat tips.
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Maybe I'm just going to fast and sometimes potentially hitting the tip on the edge of the seating stem as I first insert it.... Probably need to go slower on inserting.. make sure it's all aligned, no tilt before stroking.
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All sophomoric jokes aside...........the plastic tips are hitting the bottom of the stem's cavity before the sides of the stem contact the bullet ogive. You're going to damage or destroy every bullet tip, no matter how slowly you seat them, until you either modify the seating stem or buy a new one meant for vey low drag bullets.
Hornady sells seating stems for their different bullets, found this out after mashing a few aluminum tips. I just made one for my dies on the lathe, but they only cost about 11 bucks if ya wanna buy em from hornady.
Boom. Called Hornady. It's Hornady seating die part #397111
ELD-X Seating Stem 30 Caliber .308 225 Grain
ELD-X Seating Stem 30 Caliber .308 225 Grain by Hornady Bullets and Ammunition Hornady has designed these new custom stems and machined to fit the exact bullet dimensions. These stems will ensure a consistent and precise seating with no inherent damage to the bullets in all Hornady Custom...
www.midsouthshooterssupply.com
It’s pretty easy to drill an existing stem for clearance as well.
It would seem so. If one had a worthy drill press --the one I have is a Proxxon, more a crappy hobby one. I can drill non-ferous / sterling such.
^ I noticed that too.
GG, you should chamfer and/or lube those case mouths/necks, or run less neck tension if you're in control of that. Not good for consistent velocities:
The cartridge on the left, just above your thumb, looks like the shoulder is collapsed a little. I've had that happen with too much lube when resizing but have also had that happen if the case mouth was not chamfered and/or the case mouth was not opened up enough to allow the bullet to enter correctly. Brass will have some spring back and I always suspected that was the issue with some several times reloaded brass. Once I started annealing, no more issue.
There must be a happy medium with lubing becuase I do recall those dents happening far more pronounced so I backed off greatly on the lube.. and then one got damn near permanenttly stuck in the die... did you ever have that happen? I thought I had ruined the die until I slammed it hard enough to release.. and about broke my hand in the process. Thank God it was my right hand. I'm left handed. lol.
I thought I had chamfered them... so here again is one of those happy medium things... maybe I go to lightly because I was thinking essentially it's scraping metal away and wouldn't that result in shortened case life?
Also the guy that taught me never annealed his brass. He said it was automatically annealed with the flash of heat form shooting. Sounded like bullshit even then... but bc he's been doing it 30 years... I figured ok. That relationship also sort of went sour when I pushed back on his extremely being adamant about MOA scopes and I went with MIL instead. It was like he'd been slapped... He basically said MIL was made for stupid country folk joining the army. I thought well.. "I'm ok with that" I'm as rednecky-hick farm boy as one can be at my roots.... and God knows I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier either.
Thanks for the TIPS
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You're thrusting your tip into something not designed for something that length, that then bottoms out and makes your tip go and hide back in the body.
... and they let you wander about freely? hahahaha
Say have you ever thought about moonlighting writing porn? I know of some folks that know some folks...
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I bought a Redding VLD stem and the little test from Berger of putting a bullet in the end of the stem and seeing if it tipped (stem too short) is both simple and illuminating.
OG course finding one was a bit of a trick in today’s environment, but it’s the right solution if you aren’t a machinist or handy w a drill press (and I’m neither)
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If I had the press I could figger it out... but after some hunting I think I found the last one... Hornady Stem #397111 Paid double what it should have cost.
Yes, I have had a case stuck in the die. I was able to take the die apart and use a punch to drive the case back out. I did fuck up the expander ball and deprime pin that remained in the case but that was cheap and easy to replace. It really doesn't take much lube at all to be lubed enough but you definitely need some. I've run the gamut from rolling the case over the lube pad to spraying some lube into a zip-lock bag full of cases and shaking them up to just a swipe of the finger of Imperial wax. All of those methods work but that OG rolling pad is real easy to over do it. The bag shaking is easy to miss a case or 2 but I still use that most often due to the ease and lack of mess.There must be a happy medium with lubing becuase I do recall those dents happening far more pronounced so I backed off greatly on the lube.. and then one got damn near permanenttly stuck in the die... did you ever have that happen? I thought I had ruined the die until I slammed it hard enough to release.. and about broke my hand in the process. Thank God it was my right hand. I'm left handed. lol.
I thought I had chamfered them... so here again is one of those happy medium things... maybe I go to lightly because I was thinking essentially it's scraping metal away and wouldn't that result in shortened case life?
Also the guy that taught me never annealed his brass. He said it was automatically annealed with the flash of heat form shooting. Sounded like bullshit even then... but bc he's been doing it 30 years... I figured ok. That relationship also sort of went sour when I pushed back on his extremely being adamant about MOA scopes and I went with MIL instead. It was like he'd been slapped... He basically said MIL was made for stupid country folk joining the army. I thought well.. "I'm ok with that" I'm as rednecky-hick farm boy as one can be at my roots.... and God knows I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier either.
Thanks for the TIPS
EDITED TO ADD: I try to chamfer just to the point of where I can see that the entire case mouth has a slight cut on it. You can use a search engine to see a comparison of what a chamfer cut is compaed to what a bevel cut is. You don't need nor do you want a bevel. A bevel would remove more brass than should be. Even so, most of my brass will show other signs of wear by about the 15th time and I am not sure you can decrease brass life by chamfering a little too much, within reason, of course. After all, you gotta trim the case to length once in a while anyway.
I know you have been here long enough to have read the MANY threads about annealing so I won't address that other than to say that I anneal and am a believer.
MIL vs MOA vs IPHY vs whatever and the whole FFP vs SFP just doesn't matter to me at all. They all work. Some like to argue their particular merits under specific conditions. Each of these systems are used by very good shooters all over the world and I say study what you got and shoot what you got. Hopefully, what you got isn't made in China. If so, I would encourage you to throw it away (rather than sell to another) and buy something else.
Just don't pass incorrect info on to others.
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Your AC is set too high.
Need to keep your reloading room warmer.
Sirhr
Need to keep your reloading room warmer.
Sirhr
Whats a good annealer?
I been using Imperial. But I just got some lanolin for a recipe that Gavin guy from TY suggested... So maybe I'll try that next. Thx
AMP is probably the gold standard.
There is a thread here about building your own induction annealer and I have been thinking I might go down that rabbit hole, just because, creating an automatic case feeder and shit. I will retire in a couple years and maybe I'll do that then.
I like to build stuff and tinker around. I was looking at building a torch annealer with an automatic case feeder. My brother in law is an electrical engineer and his brother, also an EE, works with micro switches and shit like that all the time. I started asking them about some input and they were full of great info. But then his brother sorta started stonewalling me, not answering questions for a week or more at a time. Turns out, since I am hard to buy for come Christmas (that is just not true, I'd take 5000 primers of any flavor at any time and be EXTREMELY grateful, HAHA), my sister told them to stop helping me and the entire family went together and bought me the Aneealeez with every set of wheels and a bottle of tempilaq. My brother in law had studied the youtube videos and saw several upgrades to the torch and torch holder and had purchased but not assembled any of it. I honestly nearly cried Christmas morning 2019 just because the entire family (plus the inlaws, we are all real tight) were so happy they had successfully fooled me for so many months and they cared enough to play that game.
I ended up modifying the wheels that spin the case in the flame by gluing on some 320 grit (if I remember correctly) sand paper.
It works just fine and I am very happy with the consistent results.
Before that, I'd deprime then stand cases in a pyrex pan with enough water to be near the shoulder. Then I'd play a butane flame across in a dim room until I could see a slight glow. That worked, too but maybe not as consistent and I for certain had never used any tempilaq.
There is a thread here about building your own induction annealer and I have been thinking I might go down that rabbit hole, just because, creating an automatic case feeder and shit. I will retire in a couple years and maybe I'll do that then.
I like to build stuff and tinker around. I was looking at building a torch annealer with an automatic case feeder. My brother in law is an electrical engineer and his brother, also an EE, works with micro switches and shit like that all the time. I started asking them about some input and they were full of great info. But then his brother sorta started stonewalling me, not answering questions for a week or more at a time. Turns out, since I am hard to buy for come Christmas (that is just not true, I'd take 5000 primers of any flavor at any time and be EXTREMELY grateful, HAHA), my sister told them to stop helping me and the entire family went together and bought me the Aneealeez with every set of wheels and a bottle of tempilaq. My brother in law had studied the youtube videos and saw several upgrades to the torch and torch holder and had purchased but not assembled any of it. I honestly nearly cried Christmas morning 2019 just because the entire family (plus the inlaws, we are all real tight) were so happy they had successfully fooled me for so many months and they cared enough to play that game.
I ended up modifying the wheels that spin the case in the flame by gluing on some 320 grit (if I remember correctly) sand paper.
It works just fine and I am very happy with the consistent results.
Before that, I'd deprime then stand cases in a pyrex pan with enough water to be near the shoulder. Then I'd play a butane flame across in a dim room until I could see a slight glow. That worked, too but maybe not as consistent and I for certain had never used any tempilaq.
I had to order the Redding from UK at double. Good thing it’s not too expensive of an item. Crazy, right? It’s a fucking steel tube, how many people were clamoring for a long seating stem due to COVID and idiot Joe?
same w shell holders a few months ago (and maybe today still)
For a 6 pack of beer i would make any seating stem needed. Literally 10 mins worth of work. Probably any machine shop would run the same deal if you showed up with a projectile that you wanted the profile to match. Ive found my aluminum tip one seats my sst and elds without issue though.
Anneal
Clean
Resize
Clean primer pocket
Check case length
Trim/chamfer if needed
Lube case neck
Prime
Drop powder
Seat bullet
Check coal
Clean
Resize
Clean primer pocket
Check case length
Trim/chamfer if needed
Lube case neck
Prime
Drop powder
Seat bullet
Check coal
I really don't consider removing lube the same as cleaning/polishing though.
Everyone has their own way of doing things. I use denatured alcohol and a microfiber towel to remove lube.
Given how quickly it craps up corncob at $1 a pound this way is far cheaper but a little more hands on.
Cool.. ty!!!
One question tho (and the reason my logic had it opposite) Doesnt cleaning with SS harden the case? And wouldnt ya want the case neck softer before resizing? Just asking to help me understand.
I clean with walnut or corn cob media. Not sure if ss would actually work harden the brass though
I just toss them back in a corn cob tumbler for an hour. It’s zero work and I don’t worry that way
I use lanolin as lube also and its so slick that i wipe most of it off before resizing. I dont really clean them afterwards.
