I have started reloading cast bullets in my 32. The first batch gave me trouble with jamming the bullets into the rifling, after a little investigation I discovered that when seating at the crimp groove the cartridge is about .050 long is that normal? also, it seems that the neck is excessivly loose, when I resize the neck before I run it through the m-expander the neck is shrinking like .013, It seems like a little much, just looking at it

JB,

I use the Lee Factory Crimp die for circumstances as you describe as per the crimp groove. In fact, I use the LFC exclusively. Get a Lee Universal Expanding Die and just bell the necks a wee bit for cast. Then shoot the PM targets. :D

I picked up a Lee Challenger press just for the Expanding Die and that is all I use that press for. $20 from someone on the forums.

Dave :cool:

It sounds like the bullet you got was designed for something other than the Special. Seat it 0.05 deeper and use the Lee FC die, as Dave suggested.

Nick

I have some that Mike Buchannan cast for me and some Beartooths, both do the same thing.

One solution would be to trim your cases .050 shorter.
It might be that you need to trim your cases, anyway.

That is a good idea, I should have thought about that, they are only once fired, I wouldn't think they would be stretched that much, I will double check it though

The shortening is a good safety step. 0.013" reduction of fired case necks in sizing seems like a lot and about twice what I would expect on a modern round. On the other hand, that cartridge's neck is very long. It may be the chamber neck has to be loose for it to feed well in a lever gun? Is there any chance the neck is tapered and has that large resizing only near the shoulder and is narrower near the case mouth? You may need to study up on neck annealing to get good case life out of that round.

Have you slugged the bore? You can also use a wide slug to slug the case neck area of the chamber. The drawings I have of that round do not agree 100% (not uncommon in older chamberings). They show the bullet at 321"—.322" and the neck of the assembled cartridge at .343"—.345" O.D. A chamber that lets go of the bullet safely need only be two to four thousandths over real neck O.D. 0.349" or so. That's waht I would expect to see down near the case mouth of a tapered chamber neck.

Nick

I did check the cases and they aren't even close to Max length