Bullet Seaters

Ohhh, and BTW, I rushed and forgot to compliment Al Nyhus on his tape idea'r, perty fart smeller him, that.

Dunno that I believe tape will hold up to the forces involved in "straightening" anything but definitely will point out those pesky crookedy ones I'm guessing, anyways....

I like

al
 
Dunno that I believe tape will hold up to the forces involved in "straightening" anything but definitely will point out those pesky crookedy ones I'm guessing, anyways....al

It's just for trouble shooting the problem. -Al
 
Al, I was thinking about what you said regarding taping the necks to hold straightness and I agree. But this would take a lot of time.
I could just have a new seater reamed with my chambering reamer but that would cost a lot.

But wouldn't it be almost as good to take a little off the bottom of the seater die, (my case .013") so the case head touches the safety plate and the shoulders self center on one another to self center? Do I need both?
Centerfire
 
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Al, I was thinking about what you said regarding taping the necks to hold straightness and I agree. But this would take a lot of time.
Centerfire

To clarify the tape thing:

It's only to trouble shoot and see if the extra neck clearance in the die is causing the runout.

If a few wraps of tape decrease the runout, that's the problem. If it doesn't, it's not.

Good shootin'. -Al
 
The pumpkin

Can anyone please tell where to find a pumpkin. heard about it last month at a match but did not think it would be so hard to find. Or maybe I am just not looking in the right place. Thanks
 
I learned something here I had figured wouldn't be a problem. Thank you gentlemen.
 
Can anyone please tell where to find a pumpkin. heard about it last month at a match but did not think it would be so hard to find. Or maybe I am just not looking in the right place. Thanks

'The Pumpkin' neck turner as invented by Don "Pumpkin" Neilson is offered by Kelbly's inc............... not offered very WELL cuz I can't find it on the website http://kelbly.com/ ............ but call them and they can set you up.




Here's a pic, scroll down http://www.6mmbr.com/gunweek079.html

hth

al
 
The best seaters are made with the chambering reamer used on your rifle. You can buy a mic top for the seater and have the best . Have your smith make one for you
 
By the way, there is a very interesting and useful test of bullet seaters by German Salazer on his Rifleman's Journal.

http://riflemansjournal.blogspot.com/2009/09/reloading-seating-die-runout.html

To add to the article referenced by Charles here is a discussion about the statistical differences identified in German's journal .http://forum.accurateshooter.com/index.php/topic,3653500.msg35245709.html#msg35245709

if i picked the redding seater and after seating the bullet turned the cartridge 90 - 180 degree and seated a second time would I not reduce the amount of run out measured?
 
We need to take German's article as data, not proof. Creighton Audette wrote an article in Precision Shooting back in the 1990s where he physically pushed 20 bullets off center, and had another batch where they were close to perfect. He then fired two 20-shot groups at 200 yards, prone. The groups were essentially the same size. He concluded that bullet concentricity (case was not checked) did not matter.

There have been reports from benchrest guys shooting in a tunnel that concentricity does matter. Tentatively, I'd conclude form all this that it probably does matter, but not much. YMMV.
 
A much more significant area of concern:

In my opinion, all of the seating dies I am aware of, currently available to the general public are all inadequate for seating bullets properly. A much more critical measurement to make on a loaded round is the measuremt of the OAL, measured from the base of the case to the spot on the bullet that will engage the lands. This measurement, unless one is jamming hard, is what determines the accuracy of loaded rounds. As I was recently told by a well known die maker who agreed with my assessment, they are aware of the situation but it would take a major change in design to fix the situation, which I took to mean they were not going to fix the situation. I guess most peole are satisfied with "Close Enough".

I won't re-visit the causation of the problem but if one could load bullets without ever having to be concerned rather or not they came from the same machine or bullet making session then one would never need to be as concerned about having correct OALs. A proper die would always leave the bullet positioned where it needs to be.

A friend has come up with a die setup that uses bushings instead of a stem for seating bullets. This, to me, makes the most sense in designing a die that will assuer consistent OALs.

Another friend the other day, in conversation, used the expression " Picking out Fly S---". Agreed I think, however, both he and I agree it is worth doing when loading match grade ammo.
 
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It seems that we have all battled this runout bug-a- boo. Ferris Pindel told me several years ago that the FL sizing die is more often the culprit than is the seating die. I have an H&H tool to check runout and straighten bullets, but I seldom use it any more. Tony Boyer has done fairly well without straightening bullets and some of his rounds showed up to .003 " runout on Lester Bruno's checker a few years ago at the SS. I believe that it is imperative to have good dies that load straight ammo and don't worry about a .001 or two. Personally, I use a FL die chambered by Jerry Simison that matches the chamber cut with a Henriksen reamer. For seating I use Jim Carstensen's fine micro-adjustable die that has ample clearance in the neck area. It seems to work great if I do my job when turning brass. Good shooting...James
 
Charles, I agree 100% with your post. Once we're dealing with the level of quality of today's components and tools, and assuming neck turned brass, concentricity is a non-issue, at least for my purposes (Highpower and F-Class). I wrote that article to explore a method of checking dies, not to establish one or the other as "better".
Just to make sure we're all on the same page -- German, I find your experimenting and writing extremely valuable, and a little humbling. Since we can't actually shoot on BR Central, we tend to take the technical things as primary, and any hint of technical improvement becomes a mountain toward improving accuracy (Me too sometimes). I'm just trying to point that out, that although we have several tests, as of yet, no firm conclusions can be drawn about where to rank bullet concentricity -- or case concentricity, for that matter -- on the "importance scale."
 
"However, peace of mind is worth a great deal of effort " You hit the nail on the head there.
One of RG's famous lines is "Don't sweat the small stuff".

Last year, I got an idear and took my seating stem out from my Wilson seater and placed it in my mini-lathe. I then put some aggressive lapping compound on the bullet I use in that die. After going through 10 bullets - I "smoked" a clean bullet and inserted it into the clean stem. The surface contact between the stem/bullet was about 3 times that of before.

Did it help? Not sure, but it didn't hurt. In the next tournament, I was shooting pretty good until I missed a let-up which "sucked" me out to a 9.

I'm finding there is a murkey area between, the above, quotes. That murkey area is filled with these mysterious rectangular objects with ribbons hanging off of them.

Stanley
 
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I still need an answer or advice regarding the seating die with .013" of space between the case head and the Wilson safety plate base. Out of several 6PPC barrels my shoulder to case head measurement varies .001" to .0015" difference. If I remove .013" from the seater base for one barrel I will probably have .001" clearance for another barrel. So I am thinking it would be better to take .015" off the base to cover all chambers and let the case shoulders self center in the seating die.
What do you think? Am I thinking correctly or will I be creating a problem I have not yet discovered?
Centerfire
 
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