3 die set or 4? - + FCD
- Thread starter VooDooMan
- Start date
i use only the 3 die set for automatics- where the fcd comes into play is in REVOLVERS- you need to be sure that every round goes into every chamber , and that's what the fcd does- resizes the case while applying a factory crimp- i've run nothing but a 3 die case in all my autos for quite some time now- however, when i switched to a revolver, i found that some of the cases would stick and they were MY cases, not pick ups off the range floor- there's not too many people that leave 44 mag cases behind anyway- i even went the extra mile and got the fcd seperately- now everything works
bingo!!
What t-star says below, basically:
- The last die on a 3 die set is the seater/crimper die. The "inside" provides an adjustable seating depth and the "outside" portion of the die crimps it.
- If you use a 4 die set, you back off the "outside" of the seater/crimper die (3rd die) so it provides no crimp (just removes the "bell" from the case") and just turn the "inside" to adjust seating depth of the bullet. At this point, neck tension is the only thing holding the bullet in the case. The FCD (4th die) will now perform 2 functions, sizing and crimping. I usually just think of the FCD as a slightly oversize duplicate of my first die (except instead of decapping, it crimps.)
Clear as mud?
I've had MY brass stick in my .40 too, they usually get about 3/4 of the way in and then get hard to push. I'm sure that the force of the slide would have forced the round to chamber but I don't like having any resistance, I like the rounds to just fall into the chamber.
Like I said, I had about 7-10 out of 1k that were like that...could be something I'm doing wrong, could be the brass thickness isn't uniform around the neck, could be a lot of things I suppose...but FCD seems to fix that.
