RE: What do you think about crimping bullets?
 

Exempting revolver cartridges.....the only thing I' d crimp is ammo for tubular rifles. One might make the argument that you should also crimp ammo for dangerous game.........big bears, elephant, Rhino etc.....

I' ve never hunted them , but I' d surely use hand loads and they' d be the best I could make..........and yes...crimped.

Other than that.....it' s a waste of time in my book.

RE: What do you think about crimping bullets?
 

Big Country, I misspoke. You vary (reduce, usually) the I.D. of the case NECK ONLY. You do this by using a smaller expander button. As an example: I once tried this with a .450 Alaskan M71 Win. I used .452 expander plug from a .45 ACP die to size the mouth afer running it through the .450 AK FL die, from which I had removed the expander stem. I belled the mouth of the case slightly with the .452 pistol die expander, so the bullet could be started without damade to the case mouth. Using Speer 400 grain bullets powered by 64 grains of 4064, I fired four rounds leaving two other rounds in the magazine while shooting. There was absolutely NO movement of the bullets into or out of the case neck, despite having had NO CRIMP. The powder charge was big enough to keep the bullets out of the case, but the bullets didn' t move at all during this test.

Actually, a lot of dies that are used for crimping will cause the case neck to EXPAND AWAY from the bullet shank when the crimp is applied. However, I think (not sure) that the Lee" Factory Crimp" dies are an exception to this.

RE: What do you think about crimping bullets?
 

eld, I see. I was thinking the other day. the expander ball is one of the most critical peices of equipment on reloading dies. How much do most of us worry about the expander ball? I used to not.

You probably right about neck tension decreasing some with most dies when crimping. But for the fact when I load 44 mags without crimping, my bullets move. Or my 40cal or 357 mag. If I do crimp, I mean hard, no movment. I am a fan of the factory crimp die as you mentioned over this. Just something to think about. I say its a trade off. Might losen neck tension at the top of the neck, but still the crimp increases the overall tension. Maybe