FA x-10 bullet seating variance

[Thomas918]

I’m having trouble with my OAL the last 200 rounds. I have loaded 9000 rounds loaded so far on this machine without any issues at all. I have my seating die set for 1.142. About 10% of cases come out at 1.180 and highest at 1.220. These are not “stepped” cases. They are mostly cbc headstamps with a few being win, but in the past I have had no issue with cbc. I have a NOE expander die set for longer 147gr projectiles so my expansion goes deep into the case. I even went as far as to replace my seating die from a lee( without any crimp applied) to a Redding pro die(not the one with micrometer). It happens with all my stations full and when they aren’t full too. I’m wondering if my tool head has worked loose but the bolt is torqued to spec still. I’m truly at a loss here and am wondering if anybody has run into this issue with this press. My dies are set up exactly the same way and haven’t worked their selfs loose either. The only change is I am working from range pickup brass that I dry tumbled with frankford arsenal case polish. The last brass I had was a 5 gallon bucket full from an indoor range that was dry tumbled with corncob. I loaded dozens of different headstamps from that bucket and never had this issue. Sorry for the rambling as I just want to provide as much info as I can.

[Farmer]

Is your shell plate making a full stroke? It’s still touching the bottom of the sizing die? Nothing came loose in the linkages? If it’s not something up top gotta be on the bottom. My PW press suddenly lost stroke and it was the pins in the linkages that raise the shell plate had grooves worn in them. 

Edited January 12 by Farmer
Added

[Thomas918]

So I have a small update. After messing with the press and seating die I came to the conclusion that the thicker and work hardened brass was pushing the brass downward as the bullet was being seated. That in turn pushed the shell plate down until it hit the ledge that runs around the edge. So what I did was lowered the seating die down until it touches and pushes the shell plate down so that it always contacts that ledge. Then I adjusted the seating plug down to 1.142 and ran another hundred. I didn’t have anymore issues that I can see. I also didn’t see any CBC headstamps in that batch so I can’t say for certain my problem is fixed, but it seems like it is. I never ran my seating die down to the shell plate because I had a Lee combo crimp and seating die( I always separate crimp and seat functions)Now that I have the Redding seating die I can do that no problem. It’s just weird that I’m now running into this problem after running thousands on this press

[Thomas918]

2 hours ago, Farmer said:

Is your shell plate making a full stroke? It’s still touching the bottom of the sizing die? Nothing came loose in the linkages? If it’s not something up top gotta be on the bottom. My PW press suddenly lost stroke and it was the pins in the linkages that raise the shell plate had grooves worn in them. 

On the other station of my press I had my sizing die set up where it contacts and pushes the shell plate down( if you are familiar with this press you know that shell plate moved downward on heavily worked stations like sizing). I figured that the seating die needed it too despite me never running that way before. I appreciate the help farmer because it had me checked all my linkages and bolts. When everything seemed fine I fiddle around with the seating die

[Thomas918]

Welp I’m definitely still having the issues as I’ve ran into more CBC cases. They press down half the time to length and the other half they are long. I repressed the long ones and put it in the calipers and it was literally growing in length while measuring. The bullets actually came out two hundredths while sitting there for 10 seconds. I’ve never seen that before in my life.

[ddc]

1 hour ago, Thomas918 said:

Welp I’m definitely still having the issues as I’ve ran into more CBC cases. They press down half the time to length and the other half they are long. I repressed the long ones and put it in the calipers and it was literally growing in length while measuring. The bullets actually came out two hundredths while sitting there for 10 seconds. I’ve never seen that before in my life.

 

CBC brass is tough to work with.

Some people toss them. 

I load them for practice ammo.