doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Roll crimping help!

Brent great looking loads. I only reload shotgun from .410-10 gauge.

Gill, you are right .410 is the most difficult, luckily the Mec 600 Jr. has a holder at the second station so that it does not pick the shell up and then drop it.
Reloading these takes time and I stick with either #8, 8 1/2's or 9's. I also tap the drop tube every time to make sure it hasn't bridged.
I have been 6 crimping them and most come out decent. I haven't tried the 3 inchers yet. I find the AAHS hulls are nice to reload. I have some STS but haven't tried them yet.

These are my 2.5" ITX loads for waterfowl. BPI roll crimper, I bought a 12 and 16 at the same time and they sent a little tub of anti seize compound for bolts to lube them with, now I just put a squirt of oil on the drill press base and dip my finger in it every once in a while. I do use junk shells to warm the roll crimper..

When I run the crimper down over the shell I stop when it hits the plastic and hold it there with slight pressure and there is a moment when you can feel the plastic start to give and then just smoothly run the crimper down.



A little spring loaded shell holder I made, I have leather spacer for it to do 16ga.

12 and 16 ga Fiocchio, Cheddite and Fed paper all done with BGI (note: NOT a BPI) reversible pin vintage closers. They are simply the best closers I've ever used. No electricity, no vise no screwed up hulls.

Oh, forgot to mention, no messy lube.

Those are nice, I have a hand roller but the plastic hulls are very tight going into it.

I warm a cold roll crimper with a blast of hot air from a hand held hair drier. Never had to use any lube. Gil

+1 for the convenience and neat results of original hand-cranked roll turnover tools. Some are better than others; but a little lube, light pressure, and about 1/4" of case mouth works pretty well in just about everything I have - from 8g to 28g.

Well things didn't work out the way I expected. My alleged 16 gauge antique crimper is really a 12 in disguise and it turns the lip outwards, not inwards. Where my antique 16 went, I can't guess, but now I have something to search for at the gun show.

So, back to the BPI crimper in the press. Results are far from perfect like the beauties posted today by others, but not too bad. First, for sure I had too much plastic. I put 3 card wads on top of the case and even that was probably not enough. Less plastic is more betterer - for sure. The other thing I discovered is that the speed of the plunge matters. At first I went quite slow to warm up the plastic as much as possible and I held it there for a bit too. The plastic sure got hot and it more or less tore and smeared itself around the lip of the case. But plunging fast and NOT holding in down works much better. In the picture below, if it orients as it should, the first attempts tonight are on the left. And except for the very last case in the bottom right (which was the first one i did), I went faster and things got better, on average, moving across to the right.



I will get better, but now I'm at least presentable (well sort of).

Brent

Looking better Brent! place your cards under the shot to bring up the level. Too much on top will blow your patterns. also cards on top of the fiber filler will prevent shot from embedding into the fiber filler. Only 1 over shot card is necessary. They will all work. When you bring the tool down and when you feel it bottom out raise the tool to keep the crimp from getting too hot and messing up the crimp.

Yes, I'll get the lead level up. I had these already filled and I wanted to simply test the "less plastic" hypothesis.