For Reloaders: shoulder issue

Originally Posted by bulwnkl
I'm late to the party, but I see buckled shoulders. Those are coming from _way_ too much crimp, or from defective parts. Stop crimping altogether for a few rounds, then start with a LIGHT crimp and see what happens.


The crimp was set just via the instructions that came with the die. As I noted, it only affected 5 out of 50 rounds but I'll be backing it off and seeing if that improves things for the next batch.
 
As I'm thinking of it: I've buckled shoulders on rifle brass exactly once that _wasn't_ from trying to crimp too much. That was when using new Hornady brass, bullets, and dies. A fairly small percentage of the brass buckled the shoulders even when I had zero potential for crimp. In that instance Hornady replaced the lot of brass for me. In this instance, since you're using fired brass, the brass itself seems relatively unlikely to be the issue, but I suppose it could be?
 
Kinda an older thread..but on my bolt action rounds, I size, deprime and trim to length first, then wet tumble with the SS media and dry. I don't put a crimp on the finished rounds at all as it isn't needed for a bolt action gun.

I've buckled some of my subsonic 300BO loads before though. It was from to much crimp. The bullet seating die also applies the crimp. The fix it, I only use that die to seat the bullet now and I bought a Lee factory crimp die to make the crimp on the 300BO stuff.
 
@OVERKILL - I would say there is too much crimp being applied before the bullet is fully seated and as the bullet is seated it buckles the shoulder.

PS...I might have missed it, but are you checking and trimming the brass?

Yes, checking and trimming. I'm going to back off the crimp and see if that helps :)
 
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