frizzellr,
I am using lee dies.

bigcountry,
Thanks for explaining what fireformed is. Most of my reloads are from other guns.I bought some bulk once fired brass. I have a few that were from my gun. I will definately try screwing in my die a little more next time. Hopefully that will work.

Thats what it is. Especially, if your not screwing in your dies to cam over. Thats why some work, and some don' t. Now your only suppose to cam over (screw in 1/4 extra turn after adjusting the die to touch the piston), if you have steel dies (most rifle dies). For carbide dies, you can' t do this which is usually what you get with pistol ammo or straightwalled.

Now after you full length size them and then shoot them out of your rifle, you can do what you was doing which is partial Full Length size, and then it will be fireformed just for your gun. Usually this is beneficial for accuracy and low spreads in velocity.

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it could be that your bullet seater die is trying to crimp the bullet way before it is seated properly causing the shoulder to bulge slightly. try seating some without crimping and see how that works. good luck,ive had that problem before.

I have this proble with both of my MarkIIVT in .308 and .243. I have found that the way I have my dies (RCBS .308 and Hornady .243) That work on the bras sho from my rifles or new brass. If someone brings me brass from the range, I have to do the FL resizing with the camover with the smallest trim to length dimension. It is probably from the other brass without seeing the problem in person. I really doubt that it is the gun or your dies. Spend a little money on new brass. It gave me more confidence on reloading and troubleshooting my reloading problems. And the last bit of advice, find a buddy who reloads too.

Burn more powder!

Dana

LAHunter, did you ever figure out the problem? Curious to know.

Big Country is right if you are backing out the sizer die then that is your problem The way you explained it sounds like you read the direction for setting the seating die. That one you ussually do back out just a little.

Bigcountry,
I have been out of town and recently got back home. I haven' t re-sized any more cases yet. I am very new to reloading and when I got all my reloading stuff, I resized all my cases (200+). So I am still reloading the originals, I think I didn' t screw the sizing die in far enough. I was reading the instructions and it said to turn the die 1/4 to 1/2 turn in after touching the shellholder. Maybe I didn' t fully follow the instructions. When I resize some more I will post the results. Hopefully my problem will go away. Thanks again for helping.

I' ll bet iowabuckslayer has it right. I' ve had this problem before and it took me about 7 years to figure it out. This question comes up periodocally on these forums and 90% of the time this is the problem.

The problem is with the way the bullet seating die is adjusted. Most standard seating dies have a crimp feature built in, they' re designed to crimp the bullet into place at the top of the ram stroke. The problem with that is that most bullets we load don' t have cannelures on them, and the ones that do often aren' t in the correct place for crimping after we play around with our bullet seating depth. What happens is that if your seating die is adjusted down to where it hits your shellholder at the top of the stroke then the case is shoved far enough into the die to hit the little crimp " lips" as I call them. These will try to crimp the mouth of the case into the bullet. If there isn' t a cannelure there to allow some give in the system then it puts a lot of stress on the case and bullet. What happens is that something has to give and the typical place for this to happen is right at the top of the case where it meets the shoulder, the case will get a very slight buckle in it, not enough to be obvious but enough to make the round not chamber or chamber hard. If you run your fingernail over a case that' s been buckled you can feel the bulge at the top of the case. You might not even be able to see it but you can feel it.

The fix for this is to screw the bullet seating die out until there' s about a 1/16" gap between the shellholder and the bottom of the die when the ram is at the top of it' s stroke. Now use the seating stem adjustment to set your bullet seating depth. If the shellholder isn' t hitting the bottom of the die then it won' t try to crimp. This might not be your problem, but I' d take a $100 bet that it is.