sdb 40 leaving ring?

[prodfastc]

Loading 185 precision and the seating die is leaving a ring on the bullet will this affect it and is there anything I can do to it to make it stop

[LPatterson]

No effect and probably not. I am not sure if the SDB dies have 2 seating stems in the die but it wouldn't hurt to check.

[want2race]

I have two .40 seating dies (for SDB), although one is labeled 10mm. I use one for LSWC and one for JHP (and other truncated cones).

I've seen rings before but it's pretty light and I've not seen a negative side effect.

[kevin c]

Just to be sure I understand you, you're talking about a visible ring on the exposed portion of the bullet in the loaded round, right? Not a ring around the bullet that you might see if you overcrimped the mouth of the case.

If it's the first case, and not just dirt/lube that will wipe off, may be the stem is digging into the bullet because of excess seating pressure. Are you using a really short OAL? Is your load compressed?

Changing the stem is a good suggestion (there are two for the SDB in .40 cal). The other stem may contact the tip of the bullet (meplat) rather than the shoulder of the bullet, and avoid digging into it. A possible drawback is that I think coated bullets have more variation in the meplat than on the shoulder of the bullet (though I have to admit I haven't tried to measure this), and so you might get more variation in internal case volume, and therefore more variation in pressure.

As far as marking up the front of the bullet, it may not be pretty, but it may not really affect function. I've been told that the uniformity of the heel rather than the business end of the bullet is what is important for accuracy.

Try shooting the ringed bullets to see how the load works.

Edited December 23, 2011 by kevin c