45 acp min OAL question

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skip1600

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Hey guys just was doing some loading and had my dies set to OAL of 1.230 as per the hornady manual, upon finishing I noticed my last 20 or so bullets overseated my question is how far is too far for a 230gr fmj to be set. The lowest one is 1.213.. Will this over pressure and blow my gun up in my face or am I over concerning myself with minor detail.

Any help would be apreciated ... I thought pistol loading is supposed to be easier than rifle... This is nothing but a head ache
 
It is only a headache because you are worrying over something that isn't going to happen. No pistol ever blew up because a bullet was seated a bit too deep. The worst that is likely to happen is the gun won't feed that ammo or the bullets will keyhole on the target.

Pull the problem bullets and reseat them. The more important issue is why did only a few bullets seat too deeply?
 
What are you shooting them in?
What powder are you using?
How much of that powder are you using?
And why risk it? Get a kinetic bullet puller and give them a few taps to pull them out a bit and re-seat to desired length...?

EDIT:
1.200" is the lowest OAL in both my books.. But Answering those questions would help!
 
New dies creeping I'm going to guess.. Seems to be a real design flaw in the redding dies, there is a locking nut on dies main ring but not the secondary ring for minor adjustments
 
Shoot them. A minor variation. The Norc has a short throat. Did you take the barrel out of your pistol and use it to find the max COAL for each of the different bullets you load? That is a good number to know with each gun.

Take a loaded round and drop it into the barrel. There should a thunk as the case hits the chamber end. If there is no thunk, push the round deeper with you thumb and see if it drops out when you turn upside down. If it sticks, or leaves a ring around the bullet, you need to seat deeper.

The dimension you intended might be a bit long for a Norc.
 
Correct OAL is what fits the chamber of your gun and feeds properly, regardless of what the manuals say. 6.4 grains of Longshot is a pretty conservative load according to Hodgdon's data, so I don't think you have anything to worry about from a few bullets seated a little deeper than you intended.

Your Hornady manual is presumably specifying Hornady bullets, which are likely slightly different in shape from the S&B bullets you are using, so any length given will only be relevant to a Hornady 230 grain FMJ.

Shoot the loads you have made and see what happens.
 
Seems like the dies begin to creep after 100 or so rounds as I did another 150 and measured each bullet I started to see a decline in OAL after 100.. These are new redding dies so maybe they just aren't gummed up enough to hold yet... Who knows in any case I've been watching some videos on how much is actually required to make a semi auto pistol fail... I feel better now
 
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