Seating die problems

J

JeffVN

Guest
I hate to confirm that I'm a dolt, but sometimes you have do what is necessary. I bought a complete set of reloading dies (7WSM) from a custom die manufacturer last year (sizing and seating).

The 7WSM dies have, until last night, worked wonderfully, but not are now making me completely crazy. I have loaded approximatley 1,500 rounds with this die, with minimal runout andno problems until last night. I was in the middle of seating my 7WSM ammo for an F-Class competition this morning, and all of the sudden the seating die was not only sticking / grabbing the bullet, it was engraving a visible ring around the bullet and literally not releasing the bullet without some audible suction being released. The base to ogive seating depth of the ammo went immediately from 2.436” to in excess of 2.50+ and in some cases 2.60+. It started out intermittent – about one bad seating for every 3 or 4 rounds loaded and gradually evolved to every round – which is where it sits now. What is going on? I have not changed or modified the dies from the first time I set it up back in mid 2008. I’m using the same bullets from the same lot of bullets as before. They are non-molly. Is there a routine maintenance that I’m omitting (I literally have not touched the dies after set up a year ago).

To make things more interesting, I immediately switched to my Redding Competition seater, and started to have teh same problems with that seater. Can it be static electricity? I thought it might be, and wipped everything down with a dryer sheet no help.....

I live in Las Vegas, and there is no corrosion visible on the bullets.

Your help is greatly appreciated.
JeffVN
 
The brass is prepped and used in lots, has been reloaded 5 times and has been annealed twice. It has not been fired since its last annealing. I was doing load testing earlier this week and had no problems or difficulties seating that ammo. Visibly, teh difficult seating brass is identical in numbers of reloads and timing of annealing to teh easy loading brass.

Jeffvn
 
Seating

Ditto to crb: Sounds like it's the brass, for one reason or another. Use the exact same procedures with 20 new, unfired cases. Would be willing to bet the problem goes away.;)
 
I had the same issues with my 30BR only the brass had probably been reloaded 10 times. Properly annealed my cases and poof, no more problems. The difference in seating pressure was astounding. Learned a big lesson and now I am a real believer in annealing cases.

When you think about it there is no reason for a seater die to suddenly start giving problems, especially a Wilson like I am using. The only thing to possibly give issues is the brass. Either the necks are getting thick or the necks are hard.

I did just acquire a shop made seater die with issues. The first clue was the chewed up bottom edge where a screwdriver had been used repeatedly to lever out the jammed cases. Turns out the lower section of the die was a bit too small for the sized brass. Took a good bit of polishing in the lathe to get the die big enough for the brass to go all the way in and seat against the shoulder.
 
A WSM wouldn't use a compressed load, would it? I buggered a Redding comp die seating hard on powder. There was enough resistance to expand the head of the plunger & score the bore it slid in.
 
Well, I'm going to look a lot more closely at the brass - specigically the necks. It makes sense that I should, as pointed out above, no trouble for close to 1,500 rounds then big trouble likely isn't the fault of the die.

I had a nice talk with the die manufacturer this morning - can you imagine he called me the same day that I sent my email - and his suggestion was to check neck wall thickness and as a back up to look at the bushing on teh die to see if it is gummed up in a way taht would pinch the brass or bullet and hold on for dear life.

John

Some folks do run a compress load in teh 7WSM, but not me. I'm running a very tame 66.3grains of H1000 (roughly 94% case fill with my long-throated seating depth), which gives me a very comfortable 2,940 fps +/- depending upon temerature here in Las Vegas.

thanks for the input

Jeffvn
 
It was the brass, as I took 10 unfired, but prepped cases and easily seated 10 bullets into them....

Now the only question would be to find out why this batch of brass died so fast - when the prior batch from the identical lot did not - and why annealing did not help.

Jeffvn
 
If I ran into the same situation I would assume that I had somehow messed up annealling the brass and try it again. I use the molten lead method and am pretty happy with the results.
 
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