seating bullet mistake

[Hypnotk]

If you seat a bullet and you realize that your digital scale is off so the powder is wrong, can you pull it out and and reseat without resizing?

 

[dgeesaman]

If you seat a bullet and you realize that your digital scale is off so the powder is wrong, can you pull it out and and reseat without resizing?

If it’s a non competition load, I do.

 

[Paul Hilgedick]

The neck tension will be a little less if you don't resize the neck.

 

[gambleone]

May even be too loose depending on elasticity of your brass. ( as in, how many times has brass been shot without annealing.)

 

[DaveTooley]

Most of the time yes.

 

[Bill K]

I do, at time of a goof up. But not for shooting for score.

 

[Link]

Pull the deprimer pin and just neck size?

 

[Ackman]

Pull the deprimer pin and just neck size?

That's what I do. Takes a little more time, that's all.

 

[Hypnotk]

Thank you. Its just to be able to shoot at my house on my range. I was trying to try different seating depths when I realized the powder was quite a bit off. They have only been shot once.

 

[mikecr]

Yes, you can pull the bullets and reseat them the same.
While the seating force will be lower, the same tension remains.

 

[Jennb]

I have done it many times.

 

[D-4297]

^^^^^ What she said . Use them for sighters .

 

[whatsupdoc]

Just because people do it does not make it right.
You can get away with it in a bolt action but in a semi you may see the bullet slide out
of the case.

Ask me how I know.

 

[Ned Ludd]

You certainly can do it, but that doesn't mean the pulled and reseated rounds will shoot with the same precision as comparable loaded rounds where the bullets had not been not pulled and reseated. For example, if you have sized the cases with a bushing die that yields approximately .002" neck tension (interference fit), seating a bullet, then pulling and reseating it, is really little different than running a mandrel of the same diameter as the bullet through the neck as the final sizing step. In this example, you might expect to have somewhere in the neighborhood of .0005" neck tension instead of .002", which is a pretty sizable difference. When opening up a case neck from the inside with either a mandrel or a bullet, spring-back of the brass will give you [roughly] about .0005" neck tension. You might expect to achieve similar results by comparing cases with necks that have been sized with a mandrel that is .0015" under bullet diameter, which should yield approximately .002" neck tension, and necks that have been sized sized with a mandrel of the same diameter as the bullet, ~.0005" neck tension). So if you seat a bullet, then pull it and reseat another bullet without re-sizing the neck, the resulting neck tension will primarily be due solely to the spring-back of the brass. In other words, not very much. How this might affect the precision of the load can only be determined by empirical testing.

 

[BondJamesBond]

what Ned said^^^^this may be a good thing, For bolt guns I try for a touch more than minimum neck tension, I use a expander mandrel or lee collet die in other calibers to achieve this.
I think it promotes more consistent neck tension.
Your trying it may give you good results.
On another note...you trust your digital scale much? not meaning any dis respect but I still choose to use a beam scale due to lack of trust in digitals.

 

[ebb]

In my experience if you do not resize the neck the bullet will move before you get it chambered and shot. And you will have this problem bolt action or any other type. Pull the decap stem and size the neck then reset the bullet as with all the rest of the batch.

 

[mikecr]

Tension IS NOT seating force,, and there is no such thing as 0.002" of neck 'tension'.
That would be 0.002" of 'interference'.
A seating bullet IS a mandrel.
Bullets are held to a point of ballistic release by spring back force (not friction).

You could re-run a mandrel through, or seat/reseat 100 times, and it does nothing to change these realities.
The actual neck tension will remain the same because there is no sizing (no yielding) in reseating.

As far as FRICTION needed to hold bullets(handling/recoil), I suppose you could act to increase neck friction, but sizing does not do that. All sizing can do is force seating bullets to upsize. The increase in force to do that will not keep bullets from moving with a lot of physical abuse, because your downsizing was undone by the bullet seating, and holding friction is unchanged by it.

 

[Coyotefurharvester]

^^^ You're charging mistake requires neck sizing because you are removing the bullet. If you did just seat slightly further into the case, I have used a kinetic puller to move the bullet out just past the cbto(or oal ) length and then seat to correct cbto (oal). The above procedure can also prevent necks from cracking when firing cartridges that have been loaded multiple times (never annealed) and than stored long term.

 

[dgeesaman]

.002 of bullet hold, neck tension, interference fit, and now the new one is neck friction ??

Good Lord.......

It took me a second thought, but in mag fed applications, this is what determines if the bullet gets bumped in during handling. So yes, seating force on the re-seating would seem to be a good indicator of the security of the bullet. Apply whatever label causes the least confusion.

That said, the bullet usually performs some permanent expansion (plastic deformation). So that is the bigger reason why force is always higher the first time bullets are seated.

David

 

[mikecr]

the bullet usually performs some permanent expansion (plastic deformation). So that is the bigger reason why force is always higher the first time bullets are seated.

Yes it takes more & more work to reform brass with ever bigger dimensional changes, but this does not change the spring back force gripping your bullets. The moment you stop adding all that energy, the neck just falls back into it's normal balance.

Test it for yourself:
Neck down 1thou (after spring back), seat a bullet, pull the bullet,, the neck springs back inward ~1/2thou.
Neck down 5thou (after spring back), seat a bullet, pull the bullet,, the neck springs back inward ~1/2thou.
Neck down 10thou (after spring back), seat a bullet, pull the bullet,, the neck springs back inward ~1/2thou.
So any way, the only attribute holding a bullet is the Force X Area of that ~1/2thou spring back.

If you think a bullet is held back (ballistically) by friction, you're wrong there too.
Test this for yourself:
Size necks all the same, take half to squeaky clean with a bronze brush, dry lube the other half with graphite or tungsten. Note while bullet seating that forces are way higher with clean necks (higher friction).
Shoot them across a chrono, and you'll see no difference in MV.
So bullets were neck released before overcoming frictional difference.

Now, if you want to see tension change, and MV change with it, simply adjust the LENGTH of a given neck sizing, to grip more or less seated bullet bearing. ---Sprinback Force X Area---