doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Reloading problem

I tried a few things this evening, and I think I found the problem -- the shoulders are expanded on the problem cartridges. Here's a picture of one, and where the arrow points you can see a slight swelling. This one is from a previous batch of Federal cases, and the bolt would not even close on this one. I measured the outside diameter of the shoulder on this one, and it was 0.4400 inches. Another cartridge that the bolt would close on was 0.4345 inches. I also chambered many fired cases, and all of them chambered just fine. In addition, I measured the neck diameter of the functional and non-functional cartridges, and the necks were a consistent diameter. So now it seems the problem is the shoulder diameter, and the problem appears to come from my reloading process. I hope to reload more cartridges in the coming week, and I'll try to identify what step in the process is creating the problem. Again, I appreciate everyone's help.

That is because you have too much crimp on that bullet! You are pushing the neck back and causing that protrusion on the shoulder.

Dispense with the crimp altogether, it isn’t necessary. Full length resize, seat the bullet to the correct depth and your cartridge should chamber fine. The correct depth isn’t necessarily to the cannular in the bullet. Set your bullet depth to where your bullet is about .030 inches back from the rifleing…

Your seating die is set too low and pushing the shoulder back as you seat your bullets. Raise the die up and then turn the seating pin down to get the bullet depth back. You're over crimping the necks and that's pushing the shoulders back.

I believe the issue is with a stuck or sticking collet die. I’ve had this happen ( shoulder bulge) when trying out a set of .308 collet dies. Try cleaning and lubing.

Whatever it is, that is way too much crimp. I never crimp bottleneck cartridges bullets for a bolt rifle until you're getting into big magnum or Nitro Express cartridges..

I suggest you trim the cases; I agree that you don't need to crimp the bullets, but if you do and have the crimp correctly set and the case stretches, what you experienced will be the result. That is the very reason I adjust all my sizing dies to "kiss" the shoulders and not set them back.
Mike