live round stuck in crimper

[willrussellville]

I promise to report on the outcome when I get back home. It will be at least Thursday maybe Friday.

[F. Guffey]

To remove the case and die from the press, rotate the shell holder 180 degrees then remove the shell holder from the ram and stuck case at the same time. If lowering the die would help gain leverage after removing the die with the stuck case remove the lock ring then reinstall the die. The Lee factory crimp die has fingers like a one way clutch, to remove the die will require ripping the top of the case off or reverse the fingers on the die, the locking portion on the crimp die are turned up, and I would suspect you went too far.

There is no shortages of presses around here, after removing the shell holder from the press I would then remove the ram then install the press into one of my big presses or I would set the die on a fixture that would support the die without the case head touching anything, then press the stuck case out of the die.

So do not forget safety equipment, I would not use a hammer and driver. I would not worry about rendering the crimp die scrap.

F. Guffey

[Sport45]

The rifle FCD has a 4-fingered collet. His FCD just has a floating sleeve that does the crimping.

.44spcl /.44mag FCD Parts

[hAkron]

I just skimmed the replies so maybe this has been suggested already, can you unscrew the die from the press?

[Crankylove]

There is no way to remove that live round safely. The die has now turned into a hand grenade. The only solution would be to dispose of the die (preferably in a deep lake). Please do not send the die back to us as it can harm the people carrying the package if it should detonate.

Is that honestly the response you received from LEE? That is their best way to handle the issue?

[FrankenMauser]

There is no way to remove that live round safely. The die has now turned into a hand grenade. The only solution would be to dispose of the die (preferably in a deep lake). Please do not send the die back to us as it can harm the people carrying the package if it should detonate.

Thank You,

Lee Precision
4275 Highway U
Hartford, WI 53027
phone: (262) 673-3075
fax: (262) 673-9273

A ridiculous statement, coming from a company that manufactures reloading equipment.

And... Smokeless powder and primers are Haz-Mat (as we all know). Every smokeless powder MSDS and primer MSDS specifically states not to let it contaminate any body of water.
...Wonderful advice, from an irresponsible, unhelpful, greedy ("throw it away and buy a new one"), and ignorant company.



I revert to my previous (unchanged) opinion:
Yank that thing out. It's a brass case in a steel and cast iron press. The case will lose the fight, and you can send your POS die back to the irresponsible company, for a refund.

[F. Guffey]

Again, to remove the case and die from the press, rotate the shell holder, the die can be removed from the ram and shell at the same time, all that is necessary is to place the case slot 180 degree from the ram slot.

If it is a colet the case/bullet is wedged, drive the bullet down, again I would remove the shell holder first.

Some buy dies like they buy coffee, caff, de-caff, half caff, mocha, regular, light, I drink coffee and nothing and I am not a fan of those that go around hollering "you gotta have one of those under/over, double clutching floating sleeve dies from Lee. Me? I have ground up corn cob in my tumbler and nothing.

F. Guffey

[F. Guffey]

crimped with a full length sizer die.

sorry about that.

F. Guffey

[Mal H]

Grab the danged case with a pair of pliers above the web and pry it off the die. It will not explode. Nonetheless, I would wear welders gloves and a face mask only because we can never be too safe when playing this game.

There is no need to be afraid of it or to pussyfoot around with it. The case is a goner anyway.

[serf 'rett]

Hey, wait a minute, we've got a crew working in Dardenelle, below the dam, and if you throw the thing in the deep lake behind the dam, it might blow the dam and wash our crew away!

I wonder how long the Lee customer service person has been working there? And if they are still employed? Sheech. Did they put a new die on the mail mule heading your way?

I'm more on the side of the spitting/cussin'/pulling/2x4bumping/plier twisting/cheater pipe/bolt cutters crowd, but I'd also look carefully at maybe installing a bushing or spacer in the gap between the upper and lower ends of the casing. With the ram up (I guess that's where it's stuck) and the bushing installed, you may be able to screw the die out of the press. If you try this, make sure you have plenty of threads in the press, becuase we don't want to mess up the press threads. If the mess doesn't pull loose, you might be able to apply enough slow stead pressure to rip the case apart. Then ship it back to Lee and protect my crew from the dam being blown.

[willrussellville]

Ok, I got home this afternoon and couldn't wait until tomorrow to get to work on this extraction. So... I turned the shell holder around and unscrewed the die. The crimp ring was not the culprit, it fell right out. So I twisted the cartridge back and forth in the die and decided to put it back in and give it a yank. Something had freed it up because I didn't have to use a cheater pipe or a 2X4. I have pics attached of the die with the round pushed up and as far as it would go down. I do believe the crimp ring was upside down but not sure as it fell out when I turned the die over and shook it. Top of brass is pretty boogered up, not sure exactly what it was hung in. Pic of extracted round attached also. Seems to work perfectly now, I made a dummy round and set the crimp, worked perfect. Next post is pic of crimp that I now have with same die. Somebody tell me what the brass was stuck in.

[willrussellville]

Here's a pic of finished product using same die after extracting the stuck round.

Oh, and I didn't throw it in the lake or just below the dam in Dardanelle

[F. Guffey]

Willrusselville, I do not know, most of my seater dies have a fixed crimp and an adjustable seater plug, the rest have a guide that align the bullet with the mouth of the case with no means to crimp and an adjustable seater.

Again, all of my seating dies have micro adjust, I use dial calipers and or height gages to adjust the seater stem height.

F. Guffey

[Sport45]

Glad it worked out.

Looks like it was adjusted for way too much crimp. You crumpled the case between the bullet and the carbide ring as mentioned earlier. The crimp ring may have been in upside down. Look at the crimp sleeve before you return it to the die. The end shouldn't push straight down on the mouth of the case. It should have a taper on the ID that rolls the mouth into the bullet.

Does the bullet have a cannelure? If not, I wouldn't try to roll crimp into it anyway.

[mehavey]

+1

[hatecrew2006]

glad you got that round out with no problems but why do the bullets in the loading block seem not to have primers in them

[dunerjeff]

Zoomed it looks like they are there, but are sunk in about .02 ,But it probably just looks that way ,the photo playing tricks on the eye?

[Sport45]

The cases in the loading block could be empty, unprimed cases. I leave mine upside down like that until I'm ready to prime and charge them. You always know an upside-down case hasn't been charged and you can easily see if it's been primed.

[Lost Sheep]

Frankenmauser is correct,

That Lee Precision's tech would send an irresponsible reply like,

There is no way to remove that live round safely. The die has now turned into a hand grenade. The only solution would be to dispose of the die (preferably in a deep lake). Please do not send the die back to us as it can harm the people carrying the package if it should detonate.

Thank You,

Lee Precision
4275 Highway U
Hartford, WI 53027
phone: (262) 673-3075
fax: (262) 673-9273

is unconscionable.

It is callous, possibly illegal and has turned my stomach and loyalty toward Lee into an embarrassment.

Do you have the name of the tech who sent that message?

If you don't contact the management at Lee and ask for a full explanation and their plan of action to retrain the person who sent you that garbage advice, I will.

I (a year ago) repopulated my bench with mostly Lee products as the best equipment for my needs (bar none) and have received excellent customer support on the occasions I have wanted it, but the answer you got was ... well I don't have the vocabulary for it right now.

Please send me the original inquiry you sent to them. I want to follow up with them and bash some heads (or at least jump on a few desks).

I don't give my loyalty to companies/businesses all that freely, and I have been touting Lee for the past 13 months unashamedly. I want, no, I DEMAND, they explain to me (or, at least, to you) how an answer like that could come out of a department known as Customer SERVICE!

Please pardon my rant. I feel it is justified.

If the round and die is indeed (as you have proved it is not, so the "tech" was wrong in the first place) an unrehabilable (unrehabilitatable?) "hand grenade" the round and die should be delivered to the nearest hazardous waste/EOD disposal unit with the proper equipment for rendering the thing(s) safe. Any advice otherwise self-identifies the adviser as a public menace.

Though, I must admit, sending a primered round, especially with powder in it and contained within a strong metal cylinder without identifiying it as hazardous is a bad idea.

Lost Sheep

P.S. Don't anyone try to figure out what word in the subject line was being emulated. I didn't count the number of characters. I was too angry.

[willrussellville]

@ Lost Sheep: Not sure who the first response was from, didn't identify themselves. Here is second response from Pat. I had asked how to get the round out of loader which I described as a ' "duh" moment for me' here in a previous post.

You should be able to rotate the shellholder so that the "U" shaped slot into which the case rim fits lines up with the "U" shaped slot in the ram, which will allow you to slide the shellholder out of the ram and the case simultaneously. If you let me know which press you have I can tell which way to turn the shellholder. Then unscrew the die from the press and carefully dispose of it.
Have you tried pulling the cartridge out of the die by pulling up on the press lever? Or has the rim already been torn off?


Thanks,

Pat
Tech Service
Lee Precision, Inc.
4275 Highway U
Hartford, WI
phone: (262) 673-3075
fax: (262) 673-9273

And "yes" even I figured out that I should "pull up" on the lever to get the case out. LOL.

@hatecrew - those are just unprimed cases waiting for a chance to get their primers and eventually powder and bullets. As Sport suggested, I am forming a habit of leaving those like that for easy identification.

Everyone - I am new to reloading, less than a year. Have only been doing straight wall pistol rounds and this was my first 44 loads. I had borrowed a friends dies and all was well until fedex brought my new dies Monday afternoon. I do believe ultimately the crimp ring was upside down in the new die set, I didn't check before I started. Now I know and will not be ignorant of inspecting new dies before startup again!

[willrussellville]

Another question this has brought up for me.. Why would mailing the die back with the round stuck in it be any different than mailing 100 rounds of live ammo to my house? I have ordered ammo several times and there is no large "hazardous" shipping charge. I realize powder and primers require a hefty hazardous sum but not finished ammo.

added later....
Wow, did a little research on this topic after posting. What a can of worms. Apparently you can take ammo to the UPS and mark it ORM-D and send it UPS. Not USPS. Still not sure why I couldn't have done this with the die..

[serf 'rett]

Delighted to read you were able to remove the sucker; now I can send the crew back to Dardanelle next week. I didn’t think of it until later, but I should have offered the services of our cherry picker to help you pull the press handle…

If the stuck round was “a grenade” it would be illegal to ship; however, it isn’t a grenade any more than a box of cartridges. Shouldn't have been a problem to ship back via UPS. (Shipping USPS may increase the number of black Suburbans parked across from your house.)

[F. Guffey]

First, everything I see on Americas Funniest Videos is not funny, in my opinion about half of what I see appears to included injury.

A profilic shooter/reloader went to the range and in my opinion with a bad habit, he carried his ammo is zip lick bags, he dropped one bag, who knows how the rim of one round struck the primer of another, what we do know the primer could leave the case at 700 fps, anyhow he was taken to the hospital, they say, what ever it was that hit him on the inside of his leg could have cut an artery.

Ammo is shipped everyday by ground, the case with the bullet, powder and primer deserves respect, but when it is contained inside of anything that would restrict expansion the term 'bomb' part of the explanation. As I said, we know the primer is leaving, the next thing we know is leaving is the bullet, then we get into the 'neck tension or bullet hold' thing, just how much bullet hold does the case mouth have, with a good crimp the bullet is leaving before the case comes apart, with fast powder that could be a toss up. To reloaders time is not a factor, but bullet hold can be measured in pounds, now think about it and imagine if it required 100 pounds of pull to remove a bullet and then think again about pulling bullets with an inertia hammer puller, but we are talking about the amount of pressure It takes to move the bullet and for those that can consider time as a factor by the time the bullet starts to move and clears the case pressure could reach 400 to 700 psi in a chamber, without a primer the case will be loosing it on both ends.

Anyhow, someone took liberties with the caution they gave you or just did not know, regardless, that person should not have been answering the phone, happens with 911 everyday, and I said put someone on the phone that cares, the last time I called I said never mind, I 'gotta' get off the phone and go find a policeman, and I hung up and went looking for a policeman.

F. Guffey

[F. Guffey]

The bullet being heavier would leave me to believe the bullet would launch the case.

F. Guffey

[serf 'rett]

..after considering my fellow Arkansan's plight, if any one had experienced or heard of a live round detonating inside a reloading die? Results?

I've read somewhere that the case launches before the bullet when cartridges are put in a fire/oven.

I don't cotton to plastic bag cartridge containers either.