Seating and crimp.. Good to go, or back to the press?

[Pond, James Pond]

I’m back from holiday and this afternoon I finally got around to making up some experimental loads for the 275gr Cast Performance WFN lead bullets I bought for an arm and a leg!

My aim is to develop a +/- 1100fps load for my 4” Ruger RH.

I discussed this in an earlier thread and whilst there was the usual spread of opinions, one point that repeatedly ricocheted around the thread was using a heavy crimp.

Well, I followed previous advice and looked at some pictures of hot factory loads to give me a benchmark to emulate.

I have now loaded 18 cartridges.
3 cartridges from 19.4gr to 20.4gr of N110 in 0.2gr increments.

I seated the bullet to the cannelure and the picture shows that the case neck was just 0.5mm shy of the perpendicular upper edge of the cannelure. The crimp was about 0.75 turns and looks quite acute.

The question now is, do these two adjustments suffice?

Do I need to seat the bullet deeper?
Do I need to crimp more?
Do I need to do both?

I figured that if I need to seat the bullet all the way to the case aperture, I could then crimp a bit more to take up the slack that the additional seating had created.

What do you think?

PS. These are by far the sexiest .44Mag rounds I have ever loaded!!
Happy shooter !

[Peter M. Eick]

I would seat it slightly deeper but that is just me.

I think your crimp is very solid bordering on excessive. I like mine just to roll in but I am not loading 44 so it could be a caliber thing.

Beyond that it looks fine to me. The critical question is how do they work on the range?

[Pond, James Pond]

I think your crimp is very solid bordering on excessive.

Well, I am paranoid about too much crimp so I don't want to go overboard, and thus I used images on this site as a guide:
Pics of hot factory 44 mag loads.

Admittedly, mine are 275 gr, not 320, but still pretty hot if I'm to get 1100fps from a 4" barrel.

[NWPilgrim]

I agree with Peter. Seating is fine but just for aesthetics I would seat so crimp butts up to top of cannelure, but functionally it is fine. That is plenty of crimp. You want enough to keep the bullet from pulling out, but the more you crimp the more you work the case mouth (harden) and sooner it will crack.

It really does not take much of a crimp in a cannelure to hold the bullet firmly. You can test various crimps out at the range, or just test with a kinetic puller. If it takes several hard whacks to pull the crimped bullet then you are OK. If it comes out with just one or two whacks you need more. The recoil of the revolver will pull the bullet out of the case in the way the kinetic puller, using the inertia of the heavy bullet mass versus the sharp acceleration of the hun pr the deceleration of the hammer puller.

[WESHOOT2]

Test fire, but leave ONE unfired rd in the cylinder.
Test more, leaving that same unfired cartridge in the cylinder.
After shooting ten, measure the OAL of the unfired rd.

Grow? More crimp (or more case neck tension).

[Pond, James Pond]

I've used the "before and after" OAL method before and I'll do so again.

I did put the rounds back in the press and just eased the bullet in a fraction so that the mouth met with the cannelure edge.

I didn't adjust the crimp any further though. I figured it would retain the bullet just as well.

The only thing that might happen is the bullet returns, under recoil, to its previous OAL. I'll factor that into the OAL measurement at the range.

[FrankenMauser]

They look good to me.
For future testing, I would seat until the mouth of the case is flush with the top of the crimp groove / lube groove before crimping; but that's just personal preference.

As they sit right now, I wouldn't have a problem with the crimp or OAL.

[WESHOOT2]

Nice looking crimp.