wimms

I see that people often just discard bulged cases. I used to also. But then I got myself Lee Bulge Buster. For 9mm. It's not officially supported due to 9mm taper, but the thing is - you don't need it to get back its perfect taper, you just need it to chamber and eject. So the very very well working setup is this: http://www.midwayusa.com/product/807734/lee-reloader-single-stage-press http://leeprecision.com/bulge-buster-kit.html http://leeprecision.com/carbide-factory-crimp-die-9mm-makarov.html You basically push your 9mm case fully through 9mm-Makarov FCD. It is within tolerances of 9mm, including rim. It goes and whatever there was with the case before, it is no more a problem. You can even push live rounds through it if they don't case gauge after reloading press. Sure, caution applies and it is not recommended to load major into bulged cases. But if you load bee fart loads, a case will rupture on your press before it splits in your gun. At some point I skipped gauging ready rounds, especially because I gauged them during the sorting process. But murphy never sleeps and I had a bad jam on the stage. So I stood there, nothing around for a leverage but the flimsy stage setup and tried to extract with my bare hands. Futile. I lost the stage, and had to give a pretty good smack to get the jammed round out. This incident is always on my mind when I feel like skipping the gauging of my match ammo. Other thing is that I pick up range brass and its often stepped on, run over, being dragged between a boot and a concrete. So I can't afford not sorting and checking them. For those who buy new brass this is all moot. For me sometimes, depending on who has been before me, I can end up picking quite a batch of glocked cases, or even glocked NATO cases (these are pretty much loaded major). It's just a waste to scrap them all.

It doesn't matter how you start. The only valid point raised is that you won't be making rejectless batches until you master every step of the process. How you learn to do that isn't defined by what presses you own along the way, but only that you pay due attention to every step. Having 1050 just compresses the learning curve into steep one, but even then you can learn it one stage at a time. All in all you'll produce about the same amount of rejects over the course of learning whether you start with single stages and go with the upgrade path, or just go for the top of the line press right away. It may just happen that you spend pointlessly money on the other presses along the way. On the other hand, you may find that you want to have a single stage press besides the 1050 for some specific tasks. All that understanding will come as you learn. I started with XL650 without any mentor. Only later added Lee single stage for bulge buster setup. Now looking back I could aswell have started with 1050 right away. And now if I upgrade, need to resell my 650 or demote it to collecting dust. Yes I gained experience with 650, but in retrospect its a pointless waste of money if you can afford the 1050 from the start. If you enjoy the long path and gaining experience with all the intermediate upgrade steps thats a different matter, then the waste of money becomes valuable. In summary, I wouldn't discourage starting with 1050, only caution that it will take longer to understand and master and you would need to approach it with understanding that you are compressing learning curves of multiple single stages into single machine.

If you look closely at how the primer chute engages the press, you might notice that it's simply not going far enough. The fix is simple - modify the chute to let it go deeper some 3mm. Problem gone.

I gauge my cases when first sorting range pickups. It's just a convenient way to get a good look from all sides. I pick a handful of cases, roll one to my fingertips so I can take a look at the stamp, then drop it butt first into the gauge, look inside. If its Berdan or non-tox or just too small a primer hole, or stepped, or 380, it goes to junk. If it plunks freely, drop to a good bucket. If it doesn't plunk but passes otherwise, it goes to my bulge buster. It's easy to notice which case was loaded major, which was glocked or even glocked major. Could sort based on that if I cared. After I reload I also gauge rounds, also butt first, one at a time. It's just routine and convenient way to fill the box for counting and primer checks. There is no range crap anymore, only of my own doing. Sometimes I may catch some press casualties, like due to case dropping wrong end first gone unnoticed, but its very rare. Still important enough to do imo. I almost never plunk test with my barrel. If the round drops into the gauge butt first, it always plunks in the barrel. I only barrel test rounds if I wanna pass the round that didn't go butt first into the gauge. I know 9mm is tapered and supposed to be gauged the other end first, but this way I can also catch brass that has been jammed and has some scatch or tiny bulge on the rim that could later cause a FTF. Thats pretty much a scenario that normal gauging does not catch.

Guys, in this discussion you need to account for the whole of internal ballistics, not just parts of it. I will point out that it matters quite a bit whether OAL you compare to each other is with bullet touching the rifling lands or not. The case that holds the bullet can not ever make pressure rise to anywhere near the max pressure, simply because the bullet will depart. Next stop is engaging the rifling. Two things can happen there - if the pressure had grown high and fast enough to sustain the driving force, the bullet goes into rifling. If the pressure drops due to sudden bullet move and corresponding volume increase to the point that the bullet stops at the rifling, the pressure curve would probably have dent before starting to grow again. Also, if the bullet moves just too little to gain momentum enough to overcome the rifling resistence, it just compares to the scenario where bullet already touched the rifling from the beginning, or largish OAL. The hardest is the event of engaging the rifling, because the bullet must deform. But overall, the pressure peak is determined purely by the moment of inertia of the bullet weight - thats the main "reaction" part that defines the working pressure. Powder is selected so that for the duration of bullet accelerating in the barrel, the gases expand at a higher rate than the bullet is making room for them, until the powder is burnt and the pressure starts to drop. That is the reason why you must use less fast powder with heavier bullets to stay within safety margins, and need slower burning powder to accelerate heavy bullet upto speed. Consider a bullet jammed in the middle of the barrel due to lack of powder load. What happens when you fire next round into this barrel? Its not that this stuck bullet is jammed there hard, its that the moment the next bullet reaches it, the sum of their masses is creating much higher "reaction" to the expanding gasses, not moving out of the way fast enough and thus gas pressure goes over safe limits. What this means wrt OAL discussion? OAL does very little in overpressure department. If you press the same bullet deeper, it does not change the peak pressure much at all, because as soon as presure builds the bullet jumps into rifling and makes space as large as round with larger OAL has. Why you see higher muzzle velocity is more to do with the fact that when bullet has accelerated from the moment it overcame the case grip until the point of engaging rifling, it may have enough momentum to not ever stop there and continue accelerating, thus have effectively slightly longer time to get to higher speed. With longer OAL bullet sits longer at still until the gas pressure builds up to force it to deform and start moving. That infact may require higher gas pressure to happen, and depends on bullet diameter too. So, wrt max muzzle velocity, maximum OAL is not the best choice. You could start with longest OAL with some fixed safe charge, and work OAL down from there until there is no more notable increase in muzzle velocity. Thats probably the opimal OAL for that bullet and that charge combo. Then work up your charge to required PF. There are other reasons why max OAL may be chosen despite the added difficulty to reach higher muzzle speeds, mostly to do with how the bullet engages with the rifling and eventual accuracy.