Wilson seater issue

[Lawnboi]

Scratching my head on this one. So Iv got a Wilson micrometer seater and arbor press. The die in question is a 223 rem die. Iv loaded hundreds of rounds on it.... with hornady brass.

Today I went to load some with Lapua brass. Brand new Lapua brass. Neck expanded with Sinclair expander, imperial neck lube used and left in the case. Vld chamfer and debur. The bullets are taking way too much force to seat, leaving rings on the bullets. Enough pressure that it’s almost too much for an arbor press.
I can’t figure out where it’s going wrong. The die is building pressure in it as well, after seating it is suctioned together after forcefully seating a bullet.
I have....
-Measured against hornady brass, headspace is within a thou.
-Length is within spec, little longer than my hornady trim length
-Lapua brass fits in chamber gauge that came with the die, and shows as satisfactory in the go/no go cuts
-NOT a neck tension issue. Measure loaded and unloaded my neck tension is .0015.
-Thought it may be body diameter, ran it through my full length sizer, didn’t do anything
-No oil in die die. Cleaned the die. Tried some lube in the die. Cleaned the die again. Nothing
-Lubed the bullet, still nothing.
-Contacted LE Wilson, their answer was to send it in, which I don’t want to do because I’m still loading hornady brass on it on a regular basis
-Tried vld seating stem, and regular seating stem, nothing different.

All said and done it took so much force to seat that not only did it dent the bullets, but CBTO was all over the place.

So I stopped. Decided to try the hornady brass with the same bullets. Proceeded to load up a powder charge test, which went as normal. CBTO all within a thou, seating force was light as to be expected with .002 neck tension. Everything went smooth.

I’m at a loss here. I’m considering grabbing a normal press mounted seater and seeing what the heck is going on. Or buying a Wilson die blank and sending them a piece of Lapua brass.

What do you think?

 

[Jordanwickham]

It had trouble loading my virgin brass too. All mandreled and everything. I just said fuck it and loaded the virgins with my Redding Comp and will load the next round with my Wilson. Best I could figure is there's just too much new friction with the virgin seeing as all my brass is the same brand.
I used the Imperial dry lube like I do with all my loads but it was still really rough. I'll have to see how it loads once fired.

 

[918v]

You didn’t lube the neck enough. Annealed necks are abrasive and it’s hard to smoothly seat bullets in them. I suggest you dump out half the ceramic balls, add graphite, and shake the shit out of it. Then dunk the neck in there a bunch of times to get a nice coating of graphite on the inside of the neck. That should do it.

 

[Lawnboi]

It had trouble loading my virgin brass too. All mandreled and everything. I just said fuck it and loaded the virgins with my Redding Comp and will load the next round with my Wilson. Best I could figure is there's just too much new friction with the virgin seeing as all my brass is the same brand.
I used the Imperial dry lube like I do with all my loads but it was still really rough. I'll have to see how it loads once fired.

I was thinking the same thing. I don’t want to have to grab another die but if I do I guess it’s not a huge deal. A couple 223 dies wouldn’t be a bad thing to have.

 

[Lawnboi]

You didn’t lube the neck enough. Annealed necks are abrasive and it’s hard to smoothly seat bullets in them. I suggest you dump out half the ceramic balls, add graphite, and shake the shit out of it. Then dunk the neck in there a bunch of times to get a nice coating of graphite on the inside of the neck. That should do it.

I’ll give that a try. I did dunk a few bullets, and made sure there was a lot of lube on them, it still was still extremely hard to seat

 

[straightshooter1]

Scratching my head on this one. So Iv got a Wilson micrometer seater and arbor press. The die in question is a 223 rem die. Iv loaded hundreds of rounds on it.... with hornady brass.

Today I went to load some with Lapua brass. Brand new Lapua brass. Neck expanded with Sinclair expander, imperial neck lube used and left in the case. Vld chamfer and debur. The bullets are taking way too much force to seat, leaving rings on the bullets. Enough pressure that it’s almost too much for an arbor press.
I can’t figure out where it’s going wrong. The die is building pressure in it as well, after seating it is suctioned together after forcefully seating a bullet.
I have....
-Measured against hornady brass, headspace is within a thou.
-Length is within spec, little longer than my hornady trim length
-Lapua brass fits in chamber gauge that came with the die, and shows as satisfactory in the go/no go cuts
-NOT a neck tension issue. Measure loaded and unloaded my neck tension is .0015.
-Thought it may be body diameter, ran it through my full length sizer, didn’t do anything
-No oil in die die. Cleaned the die. Tried some lube in the die. Cleaned the die again. Nothing
-Lubed the bullet, still nothing.
-Contacted LE Wilson, their answer was to send it in, which I don’t want to do because I’m still loading hornady brass on it on a regular basis
-Tried vld seating stem, and regular seating stem, nothing different.

All said and done it took so much force to seat that not only did it dent the bullets, but CBTO was all over the place.

So I stopped. Decided to try the hornady brass with the same bullets. Proceeded to load up a powder charge test, which went as normal. CBTO all within a thou, seating force was light as to be expected with .002 neck tension. Everything went smooth.

I’m at a loss here. I’m considering grabbing a normal press mounted seater and seeing what the heck is going on. Or buying a Wilson die blank and sending them a piece of Lapua brass.

What do you think?

I had exactly the same issues with my virgin Lapua brass. And I was using the same Wilson seating die and an arbor press. It took a huge effort with my arbor press. I finished up a few round and measured them and seating depth was all over the place and runout was just awful. I didn't have the seating pin marks on the bullets as you have, perhaps because the pin was a better fit to my SMK's.

To try and solve the problem I resized some necks using a Forester Bushing Neck Sizing die and then ran a sizing mandrel through the neck to get the neck tension I was after. That helped a little, but was still seating with a lot of force and with kind of a hitch, like it'd catch on something an then release and complete the seating. So, I decided to run them through my Lee Collet Die as I know that tends to squish the neck with a lot of force and tends to remove some irregularities. Well . . . wallah, seating was much, much better and almost where I like it (good for virgin brass).

If you have a collet die, you should give that a try. I'm pretty sure that'll solve your issue.

 

[Lawnboi]

You didn’t lube the neck enough. Annealed necks are abrasive and it’s hard to smoothly seat bullets in them. I suggest you dump out half the ceramic balls, add graphite, and shake the shit out of it. Then dunk the neck in there a bunch of times to get a nice coating of graphite on the inside of the neck. That should do it.

I just tried way more lube, and more chamfer and more lube. Same results, very hard seating force, indentation on the bullet.

I did more measuring as well, .2225-.223 inner neck dimension. Goes right slow long with my measured tension on loaded rounds.

 

[Jordanwickham]

I had exactly the same issues with my virgin Lapua brass. And I was using the same Wilson seating die and an arbor press. It took a huge effort with my arbor press. I finished up a few round and measured them and seating depth was all over the place and runout was just awful. I didn't have the seating pin marks on the bullets as you have, perhaps because the pin was a better fit to my SMK's.

To try and solve the problem I resized some necks using a Forester Bushing Neck Sizing die and then ran a sizing mandrel through the neck to get the neck tension I was after. That helped a little, but was still seating with a lot of force and with kind of a hitch, like it'd catch on something an then release and completer the seating. So, I decided to run them through my Lee Collet Die as I know that tends to squish the neck with a lot of force and tends to remove some irregularities. Well . . . wallah, seating was much, much better and almost where I like it (good for virgin brass).

If you have a collet die, you should give that a try. I'm pretty sure that'll solve your issue.

Didn't think about that. I was just going for fire forming on mine so just said fuck it, I'll mess with them once fired.

 

[Lawnboi]

I had exactly the same issues with my virgin Lapua brass. And I was using the same Wilson seating die and an arbor press. It took a huge effort with my arbor press. I finished up a few round and measured them and seating depth was all over the place and runout was just awful. I didn't have the seating pin marks on the bullets as you have, perhaps because the pin was a better fit to my SMK's.

To try and solve the problem I resized some necks using a Forester Bushing Neck Sizing die and then ran a sizing mandrel through the neck to get the neck tension I was after. That helped a little, but was still seating with a lot of force and with kind of a hitch, like it'd catch on something an then release and completer the seating. So, I decided to run them through my Lee Collet Die as I know that tends to squish the neck with a lot of force and tends to remove some irregularities. Well . . . wallah, seating was much, much better and almost where I like it (good for virgin brass).

If you have a collet die, you should give that a try. I'm pretty sure that'll solve your issue.

Sounds like the exact same problem I’m having. Seeing as the collet die is only 20 bucks I might go that route instead of spending bigger money on a seater.

At this point I’m getting sick or wrecking Lapua brass. This is my first go round with virgin Lapua.

 

[Lawnboi]

Lee collet sizer ordered. Doing a bit more research it sounds like the idea of load development on virgin brass is a mistake to begin with.

Hopefully running them through the collet does the trick. Also grabbed some cheaper bullets to fire form with.

 

[straightshooter1]

Lee collet sizer ordered. Doing a bit more research it sounds like the idea of load development on virgin brass is a mistake to begin with.

Hopefully running them through the collet does the trick. Also grabbed some cheaper bullets to fire form with.

Let us know if it works as well for you as it did for me.

 

[B y r o n]

Can you measure the inside neck diameter of the die with a gauge pin and compare it to the dimensions of brass wall thickness and loaded round neck diameter? It's possible that die has narrow neck and when seating bullet case neck expands and jams in die causing excess pressure and sticking.

 

[Lawnboi]

Can you measure the inside neck diameter of the die with a gauge pin and compare it to the dimensions of brass wall thickness and loaded round neck diameter? It's possible that die has narrow neck and when seating bullet case neck expands and jams in die causing excess pressure and sticking.

I was thinking that too, but I don’t have the equipment to measure the neck of the die. If that’s the problem i can only see it being solved by neck turning or sending it to Wilson.

Strange thing though is, while the Lapua brass has a slightly thicker neck overall than the hornady Iv been loading, Iv got plenty of pieces of hornady that have a similar loaded dimension, and they did not stick at all.

Doing a bit more research seems like this has been a problem for others as well. We will see if the collet die works, for 20 bucks it’s worth a go vs sending it off and being without a die. Iv still got 400+ pieces of hornady that run just fine through the die.

As was said above it feels almost like it’s catching, not just tight like a hitch in the neck.

 

[Dthomas3523]

I always set new brass to .001 and use non gauge arbor press as I’m not worried about the seating pressure.

New brass will have much mor friction for all the reasons already mentioned.

Also, if you get a vapor lock in the die, just pull the seating stem up. It’ll release.

 

[straightshooter1]

Can you measure the inside neck diameter of the die with a gauge pin and compare it to the dimensions of brass wall thickness and loaded round neck diameter? It's possible that die has narrow neck and when seating bullet case neck expands and jams in die causing excess pressure and sticking.

I don't have a set of gauge pins to measure the inside of the seating die, but I feel confident that it's not an issue with the die's inside diameter. As it seems to me that the running the cases through the collet die didn't change the neck wall thickness nor elongate the neck in any way. The only measurable change in the neck was the OD to get the .002 neck tension where before for those that had no work done on them I was getting .003 neck tension. Even when I use the Forester neck sizing die and the expander mandrel to get my .002 neck tension, it didn't improve the seating much like until I used the collet die. Base on this, I can only conclude that something was going on inside the surface of the neck (besides being normally sticky) that was causing some of this problem and the collet die apparently ironed it out (so to speak).

 

[Lawnboi]

Little update. Got the collet die. Only tested one, but it worked. Ran brass through the collet, applied a generous amount of imperial dry lube and bullet seated, while still tight, didn’t have near the push it did without the collet, no indentation, no sudden jump when seating, just a smooth pressure.

I’m going to burn up my current 250 75 eldm in hornady brass since I got a load worked up, but I’ll update this when I fireform the Lapua brass

 

[straightshooter1]

Little update. Got the collet die. Only tested one, but it worked. Ran brass through the collet, applied a generous amount of imperial dry lube and bullet seated, while still tight, didn’t have near the push it did without the collet, no indentation, no sudden jump when seating, just a smooth pressure.

Glad to see that it worked for you too and that it wasn't just a one off experience for me.

Thanks for following up.

 

[Lawnboi]

Glad to see that it worked for you too and that it wasn't just a one off experience for me.

Thanks for following up.

I also got some 60 g tmk’s, I think the collet combined with the shorter bullet in the stem will help. Even the vld stem didn’t give much contact on the 75 eldm. If I end upgetting a lot of 75 eld I think I’ll hone a stem specific to them.

 

[straightshooter1]

If I end upgetting a lot of 75 eld I think I’ll hone a stem specific to them.

Good idea!

 

[Jordanwickham]

Glad you got it figured out. As for the neck of the die, I don't know the measurement but I know that's not the issue since my brass already had a 1.5thou skim off of it when I had the issue.

 

[Threadcutter308]

Grab the Wilson die in your left hand. With your right hand, try to move the seating stem/top up/down, in/out of the die. If it takes too much force, you need to back off the set screw in the side of the mic adjuster (pic below). The setscrew only needs to be slightly snug. The threaded area of the die that the mic adjuster screws onto has a thin enough wall that if you crank down that setscrew, it will deform the threaded portion of the die body and bind up the seating stem.

 

[Suasponte]

Excessive neck tension is your problem!

 

[chromatica]

Lapua brass is doped with trace amounts of iron which makes it harder to work. I encountered a sizing problem similar to the seating problem described by the OP. I was trying to full-size lapua 260 cases by drawing an expander ball through the neck. Even using Imperial graphite on the necks, I experienced excessive resistance to operate the press handle. There was not enough leverage to do this using my Co-Ax (Bonanza) press so I switched over to my Lee O press. Still I came very close to getting cases stuck in the die. I decided to try another brand of brass with a softer alloy of brass. Hornady had just started making 260 brass (3 years ago) and it turned out to be much easier to size using the process outlined above. As my process evolved, I switched to an LE Wilson bushing die that does not feature an expander ball. Then I added a stage using a Lee Collet die which fixes the inner diameter of the neck. Then I decided to try ADG brass which has a stouter build but contains no iron. I also began turning the necks so that my neck tension would be more consistent.

I suspect that you might need to consider an alternative to your Lapua cases.

 

[straightshooter1]

Lapua brass is doped with trace amounts of iron which makes it harder to work. I encountered a sizing problem similar to the seating problem described by the OP. I was trying to full-size lapua 260 cases by drawing an expander ball through the neck. Even using Imperial graphite on the necks, I experienced excessive resistance to operate the press handle. There was not enough leverage to do this using my Co-Ax (Bonanza) press so I switched over to my Lee O press. Still I came very close to getting cases stuck in the die. I decided to try another brand of brass with a softer alloy of brass. Hornady had just started making 260 brass (3 years ago) and it turned out to be much easier to size using the process outlined above. As my process evolved, I switched to an LE Wilson bushing die that does not feature an expander ball. Then I added a stage using a Lee Collet die which fixes the inner diameter of the neck. Then I decided to try ADG brass which has a stouter build but contains no iron. I also began turning the necks so that my neck tension would be more consistent.

I suspect that you might need to consider an alternative to your Lapua cases.

Since you didn't mention making any adjustments to the expander ball, I don't feel your issue with Lapua brass had much to do the the brass as it did with your sizing die set up. Early on when I first started to reload, I had much the same issue (and with Federal brass, which is somewhat soft) and found that I didn't have the expander ball set at the proper depth. Once I adjusted it correctly, it was no longer an issue. And I've also heard others, usually new reloaders, that had this problem.

That the Hornady brass was a little easier was most likely due to the neck wall thickness being a little less than Lapua's where the expander ball setting you had didn't have as much interference.

 

[glider]

Scratching my head on this one. So Iv got a Wilson micrometer seater and arbor press. The die in question is a 223 rem die. Iv loaded hundreds of rounds on it.... with hornady brass.

Today I went to load some with Lapua brass. Brand new Lapua brass. Neck expanded with Sinclair expander, imperial neck lube used and left in the case. Vld chamfer and debur. The bullets are taking way too much force to seat, leaving rings on the bullets. Enough pressure that it’s almost too much for an arbor press.
I can’t figure out where it’s going wrong. The die is building pressure in it as well, after seating it is suctioned together after forcefully seating a bullet.
I have....
-Measured against hornady brass, headspace is within a thou.
-Length is within spec, little longer than my hornady trim length
-Lapua brass fits in chamber gauge that came with the die, and shows as satisfactory in the go/no go cuts
-NOT a neck tension issue. Measure loaded and unloaded my neck tension is .0015.
-Thought it may be body diameter, ran it through my full length sizer, didn’t do anything
-No oil in die die. Cleaned the die. Tried some lube in the die. Cleaned the die again. Nothing
-Lubed the bullet, still nothing.
-Contacted LE Wilson, their answer was to send it in, which I don’t want to do because I’m still loading hornady brass on it on a regular basis
-Tried vld seating stem, and regular seating stem, nothing different.

All said and done it took so much force to seat that not only did it dent the bullets, but CBTO was all over the place.

So I stopped. Decided to try the hornady brass with the same bullets. Proceeded to load up a powder charge test, which went as normal. CBTO all within a thou, seating force was light as to be expected with .002 neck tension. Everything went smooth.

I’m at a loss here. I’m considering grabbing a normal press mounted seater and seeing what the heck is going on. Or buying a Wilson die blank and sending them a piece of Lapua brass.

What do you think?
View attachment 7391336

Just noticed this thread while searching for a .223AI seater , Forster is my go to choice and I have a sleeve bored with chamber reamer ,which I will swap out of standard seater, problem is back ordered until Feb, So I purchased Wilsons seater . With Forster FLR dies one has to send die back to be polished out to end users spec . Usually 2 weeks . I think Wilson may have same problem in there base needs to be bored out , tom, I will call and see if they offer this service.

 

[Lawnboi]

Just noticed this thread while searching for a .223AI seater , Forster is my go to choice and I have a sleeve bored with chamber reamer ,which I will swap out of standard seater, problem is back ordered until Feb, So I purchased Wilsons seater . With Forster FLR dies one has to send die back to be polished out to end users spec . Usually 2 weeks . I think Wilson may have same problem in there base needs to be bored out , tom, I will call and see if they offer this service.

The die kind of worked its way somewhat looser. I still get an occasional pressure lock. I think it’s just due to the stiction of the new lapua brass. Havnt had a problem with any once fired.
Fwiw I had a problem with a Wilson 6.5 cm seater. Wilson was quick and easy to work with. I believe you can send your brass and bullet in as well

 

[glider]

The die kind of worked its way somewhat looser. I still get an occasional pressure lock. I think it’s just due to the stiction of the new lapua brass. Havnt had a problem with any once fired.
Fwiw I had a problem with a Wilson 6.5 cm seater. Wilson was quick and easy to work with. I believe you can send your brass and a case in as well

this will be first time for me using in line dies usually with Lapua I will turn necks so cutter just kisses case mouth and 2/3 way down more material comes off this is where brass builds up so maybe cleaning up necks will help using 21st century lath ,cases are very uniform. Finding .223 dies is difficult now. So a new learning curve awaits aagghh

 

[Lawnboi]

this will be first time for me using in line dies usually with Lapua I will turn necks so cutter just kisses case mouth and 2/3 way down more material comes off this is where brass builds up so maybe cleaning up necks will help using 21st century lath ,cases are very uniform. Finding .223 dies is difficult now. So a new learning curve awaits aagghh

Good news is the inline seaters are stupid easy and pretty quick.

 

[glider]

Good news is the inline seaters are stupid easy and pretty quick.

whats the vote on dropping flat base bullets in from top

 

[Lawnboi]

whats the vote on dropping flat base bullets in from top

Havnt tried any flat base, and not sure if through the top will work or not. Nuts even dies are hard to come by.