Lee Loader

Hey, guys,

For my pro1000 I got 4 turrets set up, two of which are .38spl loads. One is dedicated to my blackpowder load, while the other one is used for my smokeless load. Even if the OAL on both loads is identical, that way I avoid the source of error to forget to switch the powder disks.

Not to my problem:
Earlier this year, I had two rounds telescoping in the magazine tube of my lever gun. I was able to extract it and reload on the clock, but it does cost a lot of time. After the match, I closely checked the delinquents and a few unfired rounds and found, that the crimp was a bit light. Actually you didn't even find evidence the case mouth has ever seen a crimp die from the inside. Some cases, which are a hair shorter than the rest, even still showed some light flare.

The obvious solution was to set the crimp a bit stronger, and recrimp all 800 rounds that were left from that batch. I did that on my hand press without any problems. I then replicated the same crimp on my pro1000 smokeless setup. But now I experience some "bent" rounds every so often. There still is no super heavy crimp, but still some rounds are bent. I try to add a picture later today when I got good lighting, it wasn't visible on the first try.

The strange thing is, that the crimp on the blackpowder loads is way stronger, and they never showed such bending. My first thought was a bent shellplate carrier, but since I use the same one for both turrets, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Has anybody ever heard of slanting dies?

Fyodor wrote:Has anybody ever heard of slanting dies?

No, I haven't. So, if the shell plate isn't the culprit what about the turret?

What die are you using for the crimp? Do you trim the brass to a uniform length or at least cull those that exceed the spec length of 1.155"?

I also suspected the turret, but I got some spares and swapped all dies to a new turret without any effect.

I don't trim or even measure my .38spl brass... it's usually range brass, mixed makes and batches, and I got about 7500 of them... so it's nothing I even want to think about doing. Actually I do have a LEE QuickTrim deluxe for that cartridge, but then it's 7point5thousand of them

What keeps me wondering is that this problem doesn't occur on the other die set.

Fyodor wrote:What keeps me wondering is that this problem doesn't occur on the other die set.

True but it might be the odd ball that has gotten too long. The case would be hard to measure if it's bent but maybe it is long and the these cases have just ended up on this press. You might just sample the brass.

Regardless whether you are crimping using the bullet sitting die or factory size die, both of them depend on case length.
In the bullet sitting die, to set it up, you first unscrew the die, insert case, raise the case\plate to top position and them screw the die in till it touches the top of the case. Then you adjust for crimp by adding 1/2 to 1 turn of the die clockwise (with case lowered).
Now, if you've performed the setup with a shorter case, and you happen to insert longer case, two things will happen:
1. The bullet will get seated deeper (same Over All Length) and, depending on bullet, the top of case may be sitting above the crimp groove of your bullet making the downwards force higher (as the die has to press harder to crimp into the bullet). This may cause the case to warp/bulge.
2. The crimp will be much larger/deeper as there is more material that needs to be crimped.

Half turn of the die is 0.055" and range from no crimp to "deep crimp", if I interpreted Lee's manual correctly, is 1 full turn which is 0.110". So, if your cases vary up to 0.110" then you will see difference of no to full crimp and possible crushing\warping of cases.

Also, did you change the bullets to something different? Is the top of case aligned with a groove in the bullet?

I'm gonna theorize here on case length...
I presume that you are using powder loads on the higher side of the scale... just a speculation here. Consider this:
A case is a bit longer than others... it gets deeper crimp due to it's length, that would cause pressure to build up more than in cases with less crimp... that would elongate the case upon firing more than cases with smaller crimp... and upon next reload the scenario continues making the case getting longer faster than the other cases.

Unfortunately my bullets don't have a crimp groove. They do have a grease groove (which is empty, because they are MoS lubed), but that's way far too low to repurpose as a crimp groove.

I've just added 2 paragraphs to my previous post about case length when you posted your reply...

No crimp groove? Are you taper crimping? Perhaps the simple solution would be to use a proper bullet, designed for use in a 38 Special revolver/levergun?

Oh, I don't know, seems to me the "proper"bullet for a levergun or any gun for that mater is the one that cycles and shoots best regardless of it design. I will grant that roll crimping without a crimp groove can be problematic for accuracy, but not always and mostly with jacketed bullets.

I'm assuming since he speaks of loading 800 rounds that he is more than satisfied with the load. So a suggestion or two look for and either trim or cull the long cases, get on of Lee's special run collet crimp dies or switch to taper crimping. You could of course live with occasional bent case as a culling program, but none of would go for that.

Make smoke,

Thanks for your replies up to now, I'm learning a bit from every single one, keep going!

My load is a Cowboy Action load, so my priorities are, in that order:

1. 100% ignition on first strike
2. smooth feeding in the lever gun
3. precision

The recipe is based on a 158gr lead bullet, accelerated by 4.1gr of TrailBoss. According IMR load data this in fact is on the high side, but it just fulfilled the power factor requirements of the German rules of CAS. These were changed last year to be closer to the international/US SASS rules, so I could reduce the load. But since the energy and recoil are still quite low, I wanted to stick with that load to ensure targets drop when hit.

I also never heard about straight cases to elongate under pressure.

This is how the cases look like: You can see, that I don't apply a heavy crimp, it's still barely visible.

I once tried to seat the bullet a bit deeper, and crimp over the shoulder of the bullet. That didn't work well, even when the case mouth wasn't presses into the lead, the cases bulged out, and I had to apply an insane crimp to have them feed in the lever rifle.