Overseating Issues with 40 S/W

[CZGeoege]

9 minutes ago, rooster said:

I had same problem in 9mm with the MA dies. After the reloading process I looked in my bin and bullets would literally fall into the case. No neck tension, went back to my redding size die everything back to normal.

 

Why Didnt you send the die back? I’m sure they would have made it right for you.. Imagine sitting on $150 dollars worth of out of spec..

[rooster]

44 minutes ago, CZGeoege said:

 

Why Didnt you send the die back? I’m sure they would have made it right for you.. Imagine sitting on $150 dollars worth of out of spec..

I did, got a refund.

[CZGeoege]

9 minutes ago, rooster said:

I did, got a refund.

Are you tempted to try out a version 2? 

[rooster]

6 hours ago, CZGeoege said:

Are you tempted to try out a version 2? 

No way.

[kmc]

So here's an update:

 

I'll give Mighty Armory credit--Wayne responded to my (website entered) complaint over Memorial Day weekend and spent >1 hour on the phone with me on Sunday while I measured things real-time at the press. Apparently, some Dillon plates are cut such that his die doesn't fit all the way down--in which case he's apparently added a chamfer to the die. However, that wasn't my problem. He had me reduce the bell I was adding in station 2 with my MBF funnel. His view was the die was correctly sizing the brass but my bell was taking some of that back out and given the Dillon crimp die (which he refers to as a "straightening die"--not even a real tape crimp), it would not compress enough to hold an undersized bullet---recall that my Blue Bullets were coming in at .399 or .3995. He told me you want .005-.006 of grip to hold the bullet and based on my measurements, I was getting .001-.002. Although I definitely didn't consider my belling excessive (I've seen MUCH worse), what he said did make some sense. After reducing my bell, I found that I had a much tighter fit on the bullets--even given my slightly undersized bullets. I've since loaded 600 rounds with MA since this adjustment with no fallout due to setback and I have an order in for .401 bullets.

 

With all that said, before he called I was running my test with Dillon sizing die and I loaded 1,000 rounds with zero setback issues. This was before he called and therefore was using the settings exactly the same as with the Mighty Armory sizing die which was seeing 2% setback fallout. So why did I see none with my Dillon dies? Wayne stated that Dillon and most of the handgun reloading dies are undersizing rounds. This undersizing gave me more margin of error and allowed me to get away with undersized bullets, too much bell, etc. His die is sizing to exact SAAMI specifications which doesn't allow a margin of error on the subsequent processing.

 

Whether you buy into this explanation or not is your choice. I believe what he said makes sense but I'm not convinced that I care. I'm not about making precise SAAMI spec rounds, I just want to shoot lots of USPSA rounds and the Dillon-bred rounds seem to work fine for that with less hassle and certainly a less expensive sizing die. Just the same--it's set up now so I'll keep loading this way using the MA for now.

[CZGeoege]

22 hours ago, kmc said:

So here's an update:

 

I'll give Mighty Armory credit--Wayne responded to my (website entered) complaint over Memorial Day weekend and spent >1 hour on the phone with me on Sunday while I measured things real-time at the press. Apparently, some Dillon plates are cut such that his die doesn't fit all the way down--in which case he's apparently added a chamfer to the die. However, that wasn't my problem. He had me reduce the bell I was adding in station 2 with my MBF funnel. His view was the die was correctly sizing the brass but my bell was taking some of that back out and given the Dillon crimp die (which he refers to as a "straightening die"--not even a real tape crimp), it would not compress enough to hold an undersized bullet---recall that my Blue Bullets were coming in at .399 or .3995. He told me you want .005-.006 of grip to hold the bullet and based on my measurements, I was getting .001-.002. Although I definitely didn't consider my belling excessive (I've seen MUCH worse), what he said did make some sense. After reducing my bell, I found that I had a much tighter fit on the bullets--even given my slightly undersized bullets. I've since loaded 600 rounds with MA since this adjustment with no fallout due to setback and I have an order in for .401 bullets.

 

With all that said, before he called I was running my test with Dillon sizing die and I loaded 1,000 rounds with zero setback issues. This was before he called and therefore was using the settings exactly the same as with the Mighty Armory sizing die which was seeing 2% setback fallout. So why did I see none with my Dillon dies? Wayne stated that Dillon and most of the handgun reloading dies are undersizing rounds. This undersizing gave me more margin of error and allowed me to get away with undersized bullets, too much bell, etc. His die is sizing to exact SAAMI specifications which doesn't allow a margin of error on the subsequent processing.

 

Whether you buy into this explanation or not is your choice. I believe what he said makes sense but I'm not convinced that I care. I'm not about making precise SAAMI spec rounds, I just want to shoot lots of USPSA rounds and the Dillon-bred rounds seem to work fine for that with less hassle and certainly a less expensive sizing die. Just the same--it's set up now so I'll keep loading this way using the MA for now.

Great post, I too use a MA die and I’m very pleased with it. Much like you, I want to make lots of USPSA ammo. I however, want the ammo I make to be the best I can make with the best reloading equipment available.