Seatings cast boolits STRAIGHT in 30/06

[Brother_Love]

Ok, What am I doing wrong? I cannot get all of my 311384 Lyman boolits seated straight in the cases. I am using a Lyman "M" die expander and I have tried my RCBS & Lee boolit seater dies and I am still getting about 1 out of 3 boolits seated crooked in the case.

I am evidently doing something wrong, but what?

Thanks, Malcolm

[hardy]

Hi Brother Love,I suppose your seater plug profile at least resembles that of your boolit.Then there,s the wrong sized shellholder,too sloppy.When you seat the boolit do you just start it and then give it the old 180 routine?Have you excessively sized your case,too much will cause all sorts of problemos,only 1 or 2 thou neck tension is needed.LOL Ask me how I know?Others will be along shortly.Good Luck,Mike

[dbldblu]

Yes, what Hardy says. Too much neck tension leads to crooked ammo. If I size to .311 then I want the expander in my "M" die to be .310.

[462]

My thought, too, is that the seating stem is a mis-match for the boolit. The boolit is sitting square in the M-die expanded case mouth, but becomes mis-aligned when it meets up with the seating stem.

[swheeler]

I would guess your seater die needs to be honed out a little for cast bullets. Remove the seater stem from the die and see if one of your cast bullets will slip through the die, they're made for .308 jacketed bullets and you are probably hanging up with the larger cast, that will seat them crooked.

[Bret4207]

Something else to check is to see if the boolits themselves are bent. The longer and skinnier a boolt is, the more chance it can get bent through the casting and loading process.

[Brother_Love]

Thank you for all the help. I am about to go in and dis-assemble and inspect & measure the die components. I will report my findings later today.

Here is what I found (Lee die):

The die is too small for the .310 bullet to pass through. I will open that up. When I tried to push the bullet through from the bottom it stuck. When I turned the die over to push it out you could see it was crooked in the die just from the small amount of pressure I had used to test it.

The seating punch is for a spitzer bullet. I will modify the seating punch.

The Lyman "M" die measures .3105 at the point where opens the case mouth and .306 inside the neck.

Malcolm

[357maximum]

Take a couple of fired but unsized cases and put a real good (aggressive) chamfer on their mouths. Skip the M-die step and go directly to seating a boolit into each case....are they straight? ....if they are pull the boolits and resize the case. Make sure your chamfer is still aggressive and seat a few fresh boolits.....are they still straight?


I have solved alot of my issues by using Hornady New Dimension seaters. I remove the sliding seater and lap it if I need to. (sounds like you will need to with that combo). I have also gone to skipping the M die shanannigans on alot of my calibers. A simple aggressive chamfer with the Hornady dies works for most of my calibers and gas checked boolits.


GOOD LUCK...keep us posted.

[Calamity Jake]

I to have gone to an aggressive 60°(30° each side) inclusive chamfer but also use Redding bushing neck size die to control neck tension and a Hornday seater with fitted punch.
Doing all that I still have some runout problems with boolits, have not been able to figure it out.

[Brother_Love]

Ok,
I reamed the Lee die so one of my cast bullets would pass through. I also altered the seating punch to better fit the bullet nose.

Loaded 30 rds and only has 2 that were questionable.

I had already used the "M" die on those so now I am trying the "chamfer" method.

I will report back later with those results.

Thank you again to all of you for your help/suggestions.

[Char-Gar]

I will not use a standard seating die for precision cast bullet seating for the reasons you have discovered.

The best solution is a straight line seating die. This type of die hold the bullet in a cylinder directly over the case mouth. It is impossible for the bullet to be canted this way.

For the 30-06 I have two straight line seating dies and both do the job very well.

1. I have a Vickerman press mounted seater with a custom .3125 seating sleeve. It will work for any 30 caliber.
2. I have a chamber type hand seating die also with a bullet chamber of .3125. I made this one from the breech end of an 03 Springfield barrel.

[462]

All my rifle cartridges are loaded with either Lyman's Precision Alignment or Hornady's New Dimension seating dies, both of which use sliding sleeves. An M-die assures the boolit sits properly in the mouth, the seating dies assure the case and boolit remain properly aligned as they move up toward the seating stem, which is correct for the boolit nose (Lyman) or modified to be correct (Hornady).

I found Lee dies to be less than satisfactory.

[MtGun44]

The Hornady seaters use a floating sleeve to keep the boolit straight, but may be too
small for your cast boolit size as they are intended for jacketed. You may have it work
fine (and get them seated straight) or you may have to hone out the sleeve slightly.

Benchrest Redding and Forster/Bonanza seaters have the sleeve too, but they are far
more expensive than a std set of Hornady dies.

Bill