Seating Die marks on bullet

[FlinchNJerk]

Hi, I'm new to reloading. Recently I noticed my Redding seating die was leaving an imprinted ring around my bullet. I can even feel the ring mark on the bullet with my fingernail. I was wondering what effect this has on accuracy and also what could be the cause?

I found this picture on this site which shows what I'm talking about. Notice the mark on the 22BR bullet.

 

[acloco]

Lap the seater plug with a bullet and some fine abrasive.

 

[sonofagun]

Have you tried calling Redding about it?

 

[FlinchNJerk]

no, I thought I'd see what I could find out here about it.

 

[Spotcheck_Billy]

Could be that your seater stem doesn't fit the bullet properly, and many die manufacturers will fit the stem to the bullet for you ......

but.....

I've seen the same problem caused by too much neck tension or excessive seating force. It happens quite often. Are you using a bushing die? What's your loaded cartridge neck measurement? The old .002" standard is obsolete in many cases.

Are you absolutely sure that the neck is truly round and concentric?

Are you inside chamfering the neck with the proper chamfer tool? Are you inside chamfering AFTER the outside is chamfered? A 30 degree tool works well. A 45 degree tool is sometimes incompatible with many bullets.

Just some random thoughts.

 

[Preacher]

Even my Wilson seaters will do that if there is to much neck tension involved, but never saw a reduction in accuracy because of it.......

 

[Obtunded]

How many rounds have you fired with that brass? Could be a sign that you need to anneal your necks, but ultimately neck tension is the likely culprit.

 

[Raidman]

The culprit is that the die doesn’t fit the bullet and can be fixed by sanding the sharp edges on the inside of the seater or you can send bullets to Redding and they will fix it. The accuracy of the bullet is not affected by the marks left there but they do look ugly.

 

[Preacher]

You could sand till there is no more, but to much neck tension will still leave a mark on a bullet....... think about how much pressure is involved seating a copper bullet with a steel plunger.....

 

[Spotcheck_Billy]

You could sand till there is no more, but to much neck tension will still leave a mark on a bullet....... think about how much pressure is involved seating a copper bullet with a steel plunger.....

+1

There's always the chance that both problems could exist in this case, but I'd go with the excessive neck tension first. I've experienced the problem using Forster Ultra micrometer seaters in .223, .243, and 6.5mm calibers seating SMK's and A-Max's. In every instance it was too much neck tension! Not a scientific test, but that proved it to me, and I could repeat the results at will.

But then there was the Wilson seater that left a mark on A-Max's no matter what the neck tension,within reasonable limits) until I sent it in to Wilson to have the tip on the seater stem reshaped.

 

[danang]

Or, you can custom fit the nose to the seating stem with epoxy or with hot glue. Barely resize the neck...about 1/16th to 1/8th of an inch and seat a bullet. Degrease the seating stem cavity and wax the outside of the stem and threads and the inside of the die, as well as the nose of the bullet and neck of the case. Put a dollop of either hot glue or epoxy in the cavity and screw the stem a little back into the die. Raise the ram with the seated case and bullet into the die. Now, gently screw the seating stem down until you feel it contact the bullet. Let the hot glue set up or the epoxy cure. Remove the cartridge, and dissemble the die. Clean every thing up and reassemble. The force will be exerted over all the tip by the epoxy and not just that ring of the seating stem. Cures mine.

 

[Raidman]

You could sand till there is no more, but to much neck tension will still leave a mark on a bullet....... think about how much pressure is involved seating a copper bullet with a steel plunger

I talked to Redding when I first had this problem and they told me I could send the die back with a bullet and they would fix it. The tech told me all they do to fix it was to chuck the seater in a drill and using fine sand paper, polish the sharp edges.

Solved my problem