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200 grain swc bear creek hell


carlosa

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Hey Gordon

I did check my powder for clumps.

Didn't find any.

I did get a chance to chrono 3 different batches I put together last night.

BearCreek oal 1.235 4.9 tg Crimp .473 Winchester primers

Hi 870 Lo 784 Av 830 ES 86 SD 17 only 2/50 rounds were under 800

Back yard Oal 1.245 crimp .469

Hi 885 Lo 788 Av 857 Es 97 Sd 15

Mouse fart #44 @ 788

Es spread with out the MF 48

The back yard bullets seem to shoot allot more consitantly than the Moly. If it wasn't for the one mouse fart, which I'm guessing was an under crimped cartiged.

But I think I'm getting close to getting the bear creek to somewhat work well.

As soon as I'm out of titegroup I will experiment with another powder. Some one here tiped me a out titegroup and molys not jiveing well all the time.

Unfortunatly I'm done loading for a while the e clip on the decaper broke and I don't have a spare. I guess I'll have to go to home depot in the mourning.

Cheers,

Los

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Hello and thanks for responding to my comment.

I noticed your crimp on bear creek was .473 and wondered if you could crimp more. I do not have their bullets all measured out but I know I go to .469 for most of my cast bullet 45 reloads. The bear creek bullet generally comes with a crimp groove that may be quite deep (from memory). I'm suggesting if you are using the crimp groove on the bear creek bullet you may be able to increase the crimp a little more to improve consistency in velocity. A crimp of .469 does not do much harm with bullets with no crimp groove. I use .469 crimp for my sigs but I know .470 or more is suggested in manuals.

If you change bullet type to jacketed or plated you may want to revisit crimp again.

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Gordon,

The bear creek do not have a crimp line.

But think oal of around 1.235 will work well.

I did use .469 crimp at some point but the velocities jumped up to 1000 fps and the lows were around 850 fps. I'm going to keep shooting the back yards for now.

I'll revisit the bear creeks in a few weeks.

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If your powder charges are consistent then the OAL Being is likely culprit. with SWC bullets you need to use a bullet seater plug with a flat end not the one with a round cup for the round nose bullets, with the right seater plug your OAL's should be with in .001-.002 another thing to check is make sure your bullest are not setting back when chambered take measurement of the oal and chamber the round from a magazine a few times and then re-measure the oal it should be the same length if not the bullets are being set back and that is bad too.

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I reread your thread and did not see where it was pointed out you should crimp in a separate step from seating. Seating and crimping at the same time will give you variable OAL with soft bullets. It's a pain on a single stage press but I have no trouble with my dillon 550.

Otherwise, your barrel may need fat bullets to get good velocities. When I was using bear creek they were the fat ones I thought.

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Hey Gordon,

Thanks for the input. The seating and crimping is happening in two separate stations.

My seater does not do any crimping.

I've been experimenting allot the last couple of days and I think the problem like usual is my lack of experience.

For example today I noticed for the first time that the powder drop starts throwing lighter charges when the it gets to the half full mark.

Also I'm using a powder bar with a unique teq micro meter dial (which I bumped today towards the end of loading a batch).

After the weekend I'm going to start a new batch of bear creeks and I will track the powder charge every 5 rounds. Throught outthe hole process.

Also I think I need to spend more time sorting my brass.

While Gage checking some of the rounds I have found cracked cases which I'm guessing could be the sorse of the really low velocity rounds.

Anyway I thank everyone here for your help. I think I need to revist my process so I fully rule out "operator error" :)

Cheers,

Los

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  • 5 months later...

Hey guys,

It's been a long time sence I started this thread, anyway I found out what my problem was...

Super silly mistake in my part..

The huge variation in velocities was caused by me getting to much case lube inside my shells, which was neutralizing the powder.

As soon as I started lubeing my cases mouth side down the problem went away..

Thank you all for your patience and helpfulness :D

Cheers,

Los

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  • 3 weeks later...

The huge variation in velocities was caused by me getting to much case lube inside my shells, which was neutralizing the powder.

Thanks for posting your solution to this Los. For the of the rest of us, can you tell us what case lube you were using? That way we can make it a point to be sure not to get that stuff into the powder/primer area.

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The huge variation in velocities was caused by me getting to much case lube inside my shells, which was neutralizing the powder.

Thanks for posting your solution to this Los. For the of the rest of us, can you tell us what case lube you were using? That way we can make it a point to be sure not to get that stuff into the powder/primer area.

Dillon pump bottle case lube...

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Dillon pump bottle case lube...

Interesting, I thought that stuff was supposed to be nothing more than liquid lanolin dissolved in Isopropyl Alcohol. I guess you can never be too careful.

Yeah,

i had heard somewhere that case lube was totally harmless to powder and primers..

and I'm sure it is to a large degree.

but i definitely had wet powder from lube that hadn't dried, i big clue was going to the range 5 minutes after finishing a batch, and having 2 or 3 bullet's that sounded like squibs.

cheers,

Los.

Edited by carlosa
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Your dancing OAL is not the problem. The 45 ACP is pretty much insensitive to this sort of thing. The load sucks. TG and 200gr SWC works better at lower charge weights, i.e. 4.1 grs.

Problem has been resolved thank you :)

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Interesting thing with the lube. I guess you can't trust the bottle when it says it's intert. Thank you for taking the time to post your solution! That will help alot of reloaders here FINALLY learn to NOT lube their pistol cartridges when using carbide dies. <_<

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Interesting thing with the lube. I guess you can't trust the bottle when it says it's intert. Thank you for taking the time to post your solution! That will help alot of reloaders here FINALLY learn to NOT lube their pistol cartridges when using carbide dies. <_<

I still lube, i find that it makes a big difference when operating the machine even with carbide dies.

but the important thing to keep in mind is if you are going to lube.. lube your cases mouth down so not to get any lube inside the case...

cheers,

Los.

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