1st mistake!

[Pilgrims Pride]

I loaded up a bunch of 38 specials.
When i went to shoot them I realized my sizer die wasn't set quite deep enough.
Casings are hard to load and harder to extract.
So, I pulled the primer punch out of the die and I'm resizing the lot of them.
In doing this I see that the crimp is messed up and the bullet heads are loose enough that I can spin them with my fingers.
Do I need to crimp them all again? Will it cause a hazard if I shoot them as is?

 

[pastera]

You resized the bullets - have to pull the bullets and start with new bullets.

What bullets?
Powder?
COAL?

38 spl is a straight wall so you shouldn't have a sizing issue - more probably crimp related.

 

[Pilgrims Pride]

Can I get a second opinion here!
It'll suck wasting those bullets!
Bullets are lead 158gr over 4.6gr BE-86
COAL 1.45

 

[Pilgrims Pride]

158gr lead rnfp

 

[Artie]

Did you mean you didn't set your seating die correctly, your resizing die correctly or you incorrectly sized the bullets? Did you bell the mouth too much for seating the bullet? I have pulled bullets, carefully deprimed and resized the brass and reused the primers and bullets. It is all dependant on how deformwd the bullets are due to what crimp you used and how much. Maybe some pics? Good luck

 

[Pilgrims Pride]

Artie, I Think you're right. It's a seating/crimp issue. I can see the slightest bulge in the cases.
I'm shooting them through a GP-100 .357.
some rounds fit in the cylinder. Some do not. I actually took the calipers to each chamber on the cylinder.
They vary a bit over several of them.
Not blaming the gun. Just found it interesting.

 

[Pilgrims Pride]

This is the bullet I'm using

 

[EddieCoyle]

Second opinion? Jesus Christ Dude, what were you thinking? Scrap them and chalk it up to a lesson learned.

You ruined the bullets.

Recrimping won't help, and if by some f-ed up reason you're able to crimp the cases hard enough to sort of hold the bullets, you're wasting your time shooting the rounds, and you might even hurt yourself.

Never, ever run loaded rounds through the resizing die. The resizing die makes the cases significantly undersized on purpose. The die manufacturers make the dies to undersize the cases by 0.003" to 0.010" depending on the die manufacturer and the thickness of the brass. They do this on purpose to account for differing thicknesses of the cases. The dies are made so they they'll squeeze even the thinnest cases enough so that the inside diameter is 0.005" smaller than the bullet diameter. Then, when you run the expander die into the case mouth, it re-expands the mouth out to the proper size.

The wall thickness for 38 Special cases runs from 0.008" to 0.014". If your brass is really thin, your bullets got squeezed to 0.347". Worst case, they got squeezed to 0.335". Lead doesn't spring back much. You wrecked them.

Or you can wait for a different opinion where someone tells you they'll be fine.

 

[Pilgrims Pride]

Guys, thanks for the answers.
Lesson learned.
That's why I asked.
I don't know what I don't know.
Now I do.

 

[jpm]

get a Lee FCD, it will fix that issue with ease.

 

[Fixxah]

If you managed to pop a round off while running it into the die when loaded, we would be reading an obit. Toss those like the man "EddieCoyle" said. Take his class if you haven't already. Don't be that guy.

 

[EddieCoyle]

get a Lee FCD, it will fix that issue with ease.

It might, or if you don't know what you're doing it will make it tragically worse.

 

[Fixxah]

Start from scratch and make some dummy rounds to get it right. That is a pretty straight forward cartridge, read more and watch videos. If you have a friend who reloads, ride shotgun for a couple hundred rounds. I use a fcd on 45auto only. Maybe try a different bullet and crimp. Are these cases from the same lot?

 

[jpm]

It might, or if you don't know what you're doing it will make it tragically worse.

True. In this case, his cartridges look very similar to what I've seen loading 45-70 rounds with lead bullets. They do tend to bulge a little bit and if you try to load them in the chamber, they may not go or be very tight squeezing in there. A quick run through the FCD smooths out the bulge and they load just fine.

I also noticed that going slowly and seating the bullets only a little bit at a time, like 1/3 or 1/4 of the depth, then pulling it out of the die and doing another portion, etc until its seated would lessen the bulging in the case. Any that remained is smoothed out by a quick run thru the FCD which I also use for crimping rather than crimping via the seating die. I use the FCD for pretty much every pistol and rifle round I load now.

 

[EddieCoyle]

True. In this case, his cartridges look very similar to what I've seen loading 45-70 rounds with lead bullets. They do tend to bulge a little bit and if you try to load them in the chamber, they may not go or be very tight squeezing in there. A quick run through the FCD smooths out the bulge and they load just fine.

I also noticed that going slowly and seating the bullets only a little bit at a time, like 1/3 or 1/4 of the depth, then pulling it out of the die and doing another portion, etc until its seated would lessen the bulging in the case. Any that remained is smoothed out by a quick run thru the FCD which I also use for crimping rather than crimping via the seating die. I use the FCD for pretty much every pistol and rifle round I load now.

I was at the range one day and the guy next to me blew a Delta Elite to f***ing bits. I looked at his rounds and saw that the "taper" crimp he made with his FCD had pressed the sides of the case completely into the bullet. In other words, there was no case mouth on which to headspace. His rounds were headspacing on the extractor. When we found the slide that flew off the gun, we found a cracked ejector claw/hook.

He was loading with Blue Dot, so an over charge didn't blow up the gun. The only way the gun could've come apart was that a round was able to headspace on the cracked extractor, and go off with the case mouth engaged into the rifling.

There is no way you could load a round this way that would chamber unless you'd used a Lee Factory Crimp Die.

 

[pastera]

Can I get a second opinion here!
It'll suck wasting those bullets!
Bullets are lead 158gr over 4.6gr BE-86
COAL 1.45

You didn't waste anything.
Recast those into perfectly good bullets and hide your mistake.
Are you within a decent drive from Taunton?
If so, come by and cast up 5 lbs of 38 fodder. Your choice to Hitek or wax lube and size 358 or 359 (you do know your cylinder size, right?)

 

[TrashcanDan]

Chalk it up as a loss and a lesson.
Anything straight walled is pretty tough to screw up, but make a run of 5 or 10 duds (usually no primer or powder) before doing several hundred.

 

[45collector]

I was at the range one day and the guy next to me blew a Delta Elite to f***ing bits. I looked at his rounds and saw that the "taper" crimp he made had pressed the sides of the case completely into the bullet. In other words, there was no case mouth on which to headspace. His rounds were headspacing on the extractor. When we found the that flew off the gun, we found a cracked ejector claw/hook.

He was loading with Blue Dot, so an over charge didn't blow up the gun. The only way the gun could've come apart was that a round was able to headspace on the cracked extractor, and go off with the case mouth engaged into the rifling.

There is no way you could load a round this way that would chamber unless you'd used a Lee Factory Crimp Die.

F*ck. What a dumb way to ruin a nice Colt. :/

 

[EddieCoyle]

F*ck. What a dumb way to ruin a nice Colt. :/

I asked him why he was applying so much crimp, and he said that he'd had it set up properly, but it didn't "feel" like he was applying enough crimp, so he cranked it down more. I asked him how he knew what it was supposed to feel like, and he admitted that he didn't (obviously).

 

[jpm]

I asked him why he was applying so much crimp, and he said that he'd had it set up properly, but it didn't "feel" like he was applying enough crimp, so he cranked it down more. I asked him how he knew what it was supposed to feel like, and he admitted that he didn't (obviously).

OMFG that's insane! He obviously didn't even read the directions that tell you how much to start with and how much to increase it if you want more crimp. He must have cranked that thing down quite a few turns to do that. At least compare it to a factory round to see if they look close.

Must have made one helluva boom when that went off!

 

[45collector]

I asked him why he was applying so much crimp, and he said that he'd had it set up properly, but it didn't "feel" like he was applying enough crimp, so he cranked it down more. I asked him how he knew what it was supposed to feel like, and he admitted that he didn't (obviously).

I have a little collection of mess-ups on my first tries reloading. My favorite is a 115gr 9mm I squeezed into a .380 case.

 

[whacko]

OMFG that's insane! He obviously didn't even read the directions that tell you how much to start with and how much to increase it if you want more crimp. He must have cranked that thing down quite a few turns to do that. At least compare it to a factory round to see if they look close.

Must have made one helluva boom when that went off!

I did a ton of reading and talking to reloaders at the club before I even started. Amazing how much guys are willing to help. One of the older guys gave me his cell number and told me to call him if I had questions the first time I made some rounds. I had a couple questions about crimp and called him.....that helped alot.