to crimp... or not to crimp... that is the question
- Thread starter condomboy
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- Somewhere on the Hudson Bay Coast
Anytime I load a bullet with a cannelure or better yet, a crimping groove, I'll crimp. There is no down side when its done correctly, and it will uniform your bullet pull weight in a similar fashion as when a target shooter seats his bullet into the lands. With a hunting rifle, chances are if the cartridge is short enough to run through the magazine, its too short to reach the lands anyway, so crimping is a viable option. How much of an advantage is it? If you shoot a hard kicker, or if you shoot a rifle with a tube magazine, it might prevent the bullet from being driven back into the case. But even if you just feel like it makes your ammo just a little bit better, that's reason enough. Oh by the way, if you shoot factory hunting ammo, regardless who makes it, the bullets are crimped.
Agreed...everyone to their own....I hunt...not paper... it about half and half for me crimp vs no crimp...try both ways and go with what works for you is my thinking...not generalizations.
Best part of this hobby is try to find that magic combo
Every time I read one of these crimp/no crimp threads I read the same B.S. About "if you crimp a match bullet your ####'l fall off" or "if you crimp your accuracy will fall into the toilet".
All I'll say is this: stop reading this and go and try it - you may just be surprised with where the experiment takes you.
I've loaded crimped match ammo that has shot very well indeed, and in some cases superior to non-crimped stuff.
Here is a good photo of a crimped .223 (77smk) with two pulled bullets - one crimped, the other not. The crimping makes less indentation than the rifling.
That squished part is pretty big, that was a tight crimp.
I've tried both crimp and non crimp, with the smk 69gr, Berger 70/75gr vld, Hornady vmax 50/55 grain, Berger 64gr fb varmint, and some m855 clones. The only ones which had better results with a crimp were, not surprisingly, the clones with a cannellure. All others suffered, generally minor, but enough to notice. I tried everything from a very light crimp to a pretty heavy one, and the heavier I went the worse the results, on the bullets with no cannelure.
There is a reason that cannelures are put on some bullets - they are meant to be crimped. Without a cannelure, you do some damage to the bullet. Any damage is not good, if you could figure out a way to get the bullet to sit tight in the bore and be perfectly in line with the bore axis, and not have rifling engrave the bullet, I'm sure that would be even better.
There is also no justification to use the crimp to even out the pull out force. It wouldn't do that. It would increase the pull out force, therefore giving less variation by percentage of total force, but you will still have your variation. It would be, at best, a band aid for crappy hand loading technique. Neither does seating at the lands. Seating at the lands is done for other reasons, which have more to do with the bullet lining up with the axis of the bore, and with not damaging three bullet from high velocity impact on the lands, start pressure, and simply case volume.
It was said before, if you have problems with extreme spread that crimping helps fix, then you need to look at preparing your brass more consistently. There is a reason that NO benchrest guys crimp, and that very few other comp shooters crimp, unless they are shooting a gun/cartridge combo that tends to force bullets in or pull them out on recoil. That is the only reason to crimp: to keep the bullet from moving before the primer is struck.
If you have ES problems, anneal your brass properly, turn the necks if needed (even just enough to even them out, not necessarily enough to thin out the entire neck), use a good sizing die, often with no expander ball can help, and make sure you are seating the bullet far enough into the neck to allow the neck to have a proper hold. You might even want to look into a collet neck die by Lee, which you can hone the mandrel down to give you the right neck tension, or a bushing die. But crimping to try and reduce the neck tension/pull out force variations is not a good reason to crimp, not if you are looking for real accuracy and not just plinking.
That's not to say you can't crimp and have good accuracy, they are not mutually exclusive or inclusive. But generally, you should see better accuracy with non crimped rounds, assuming the brass prep is und same for both.
Time would be better spent making your brass prep more consistent. Once you have your prep consistent and you know that every single case is as close to the same as three next one, especially with respect to neck length and neck diameter (and preferably neck wall thickness and uniformity), then you could go ahead and try coming versus not. But again, I'm sure sure you will find that if your bullet has no cannelure, that crimping doesn't help if your prep is good. If you have a cannelure, and you can actually seat to that depth and get good performance, then go ahead.
Oh, and be careful. If you're using match bullets, even with a cannelure, sometimes when you crimp your ####'l fall off into the toilet, or something
Thank you!!! This is why I asked first, I love mine so much I don't want it to fall off... I always worry that something like that could happen.
kidding aside, thank you for the other info though... I was just looking at die sets and was trying to decide if it was worth the extra bit to buy the set with a factory crimp die or not.
I left the crimp die out and went with this - http://www.budgetshootersupply.ca/frame.cfm?ItemID=143&CategoryID=33
full length sizing die
collet neck sizing die
bullet seating die
I plan on annealing and trimming (can't find a Lee case length gauge so trimming will have to wait) and since the majority of the brass is once fired from the same rifle it's going back in, I was hoping to only neck size. I do have some new Horny Match brass that I will run through the full length and ensure the same COAL
It's a new process for me so just wanted some input as I learn more about getting more accurate out to some further distances... I want the repeatability, plus with a kid on the way, if I can roll my own and save some cash, I'm all in for that too, keeps me shootin' and whe wife off my back
- Location
- Somewhere on the Hudson Bay Coast
I no longer bother to separate my hunting rifle brass by weight, neither do I bother to turn necks for my hunting rifle brass, but I do uniform all of my primer pockets, deburr and uniform all flash holes, trim to a uniform length after each firing. Annealing is something I do when I only have a small number of cases, but for the majority of cartridges I load for, I have lots of brass. I think crimping bullets without cannelures is a poor idea, and for that reason most of the hunting bullets I choose have cannelures, but I did acquire a neat little tool from Corbin for those odd exceptions from Matrix and Woodleigh.
This is where internet myths get entangled with the actual truth, so I can tell you it will never fall off, "BUT" if you over crimp you can go blind.
This is where internet myths get entangled with the actual truth, so I can tell you it will never fall off, "BUT" if you over crimp you can go blind.
I'm not worried about that, I always wear eye protection
Thank you!!! This is why I asked first, I love mine so much I don't want it to fall off... I always worry that something like that could happen.
kidding aside, thank you for the other info though... I was just looking at die sets and was trying to decide if it was worth the extra bit to buy the set with a factory crimp die or not.
I left the crimp die out and went with this - http://www.budgetshootersupply.ca/frame.cfm?ItemID=143&CategoryID=33
full length sizing die
collet neck sizing die
bullet seating die
I plan on annealing and trimming (can't find a Lee case length gauge so trimming will have to wait) and since the majority of the brass is once fired from the same rifle it's going back in, I was hoping to only neck size. I do have some new Horny Match brass that I will run through the full length and ensure the same COAL
It's a new process for me so just wanted some input as I learn more about getting more accurate out to some further distances... I want the repeatability, plus with a kid on the way, if I can roll my own and save some cash, I'm all in for that too, keeps me shootin' and whe wife off my back
Hey no worries, I always want to help guys avoid their dicks falling off! Especially with match ammo! (Somehow that's related I'm sure lol)
But yea you got the right set. The Lee seating die, I'm not a huge fan of, but that's more because it isn't perfect and adjusts kind of oddly. It doesn't have a very fine adjustment, and it has some lash between the threads. But it works, and if you aren't going to be picky down to exactly the thousandth of a inch, you're probably fine. I got the Lee kit with factory crimp die, and got the collet die separate.. I don't touch the crimp die, but i figured it might be good to have if I decide to get a semi auto in this caliber. The full length die is good, but how I do my brass is this (I don't turn the necks, my chamber is loose so it isn't required, and i haven't had they money to spare to buy a turner to increase the consistency, though it is next on the list):
-Deprime
-Tumble
-full length size (if new brass or if having feeding issues, if brass is clean I may do this before tumbling, if brass is dirty I will also tumble after full length sizing to remove sizing wax, this is a short tumble though in walnut), or if not full length sizing then Redding body die, though I'm not totally certain yet that this step is worthwhile all the time. If the case has been fired in my gun and it's getting sticky, I'll body die first and see if it feeds better, if not then full length die. Though the body die can set the shoulder back, I leave the full length die set to push it back further than absolutely required to allow fire forming, and the body die is set to leave the shoulder alone. Jury is out on the body die for me.
-Swage primer pocket (if required)
-Clean primer pocket and neck
-Uniform primer pocket and deburr flash hole
-trim case to length and chamfer neck, tiny chamfer on outside, slightly bigger on inside
-Anneal neck/shoulder to about 700-750 deg f, once temp is reached brass is dumped into cool water immediately.
-neck size brass in Lee collet die
-prime case
-dip necks in dry neck lubricating powder (moly dust in ceramic or lead beads)
-powder charge into case
-seat bullet, generally to between 5 thou off lands to right at the lands but not jammed, depending on the bullet and my experience with it; if it's a short bullet like anything less than 50-55 grains sometimes I have to go further off the lands to ensure I get at least half way down the neck, though I prefer more. Since I don't take this gun hunting anything but coyote or gopher etc, I don't have to worry about the cartridges getting banged around, so as long as the load is developed with the seating depth used, I find it isn't a big deal to have it not seated all the way firm to the neck/shoulder junction, seating is done in a forstner seating die
-put cartridge in gun and proceed to shoot, often more poorly than i like, but that isn't the fault of my ammo
I also do cull cases if there is any chance if impending head separation, if the neck thickness varies by more than one thou, though I don't think that it can be measured down to one thou with my technique so some probably get through. Going to buy a case master or the Redding version of it when i can afford it. I do find that with this much work invested in my brass, I do like to take care of it, annealing often (every two firings is what I've worked up to, though Jerry at mystic precision does it every firing and i think there certainly is merit to that, especially if you are shooting competitions and/or if you are using ammo from a previous batch and a new batch, thus some have one firing without annealing others are freshly annealed my way, whereas if u anneal every time you know they are all uniform. That is likely what I am going to be doing in the future.
That's just my technique, I've developed that through trial and error and through researching what shooters who are much better than me do.
I had started to prepare a pretty lengthy and long winded rebuttal to you posts...but I'll sum up with 'agree to disagree' with some of what you posted.
The point I was making is that Hand loaders should keep an open mind when loading - while there are some generalities with respect to the craft there are very little in the way of truisms. What may work for someone loading and shooting benchrest, may not go down so great with others sports, and what works great for one firearm may fall flat in another. Making broad based claims that crimping degrades accuracy just tells me your experience is narrowly focused.
i think I have a pretty decent handle on handloading...thanks though.
The point I was making is that Hand loaders should keep an open mind when loading - while there are some generalities with respect to the craft there are very little in the way of truisms. What may work for someone loading and shooting benchrest, may not go down so great with others sports, and what works great for one firearm may fall flat in another. Making broad based claims that crimping degrades accuracy just tells me your experience is narrowly focused.
