Any danger in reseating loaded bullets?

L

L. Boscoe

New member
Ok, I have about 100 SWC 45acp loaded with light loads of 231, about 4.3gr.
they are giving me trouble in chambering, so I made up a new batch with
a deeper bullet seating, giving an OAL of 1.245 in, which chamber nicely.
The question: will I create a hazardous condition if I put the already loaded
back in the press and push the bullets down to the 1.245 level, or just put up with the problem and use up the taller loads?
 
Seating them dealer will increase pressure, how much is hard to tell. I’d pull them and work the load back up with the new seating depth watching for pressure signs. As a general procedure in semi auto pistols I load up a long dummy round, then plunk and reseat as necessary until it plunks. Then seat it .010” deaper to allow for bullet length variance. Then I load up a half dozen or so and load them in a mag and make sure they cycle reliably. After all this I work up the load starting from the ground up. I do watch out for the upper load limits to make sure my seating depth isn’t compressing the powder. If staying within these limits doesn’t give you what your looking for try another powder that you can go to the max load without compressing the powder. I know somebody is going to comment on avoiding powder compression but Lyman’s manually says no bueno and that’s good enough for me
 
The main problem, if it is the same charge you are currently using in the corrected COL cartridges, will be the crimp scraping lead off the bullet as you shove it in deeper. This will appear as a ring of lead built up around the case mouth. If you load and shoot rounds with that ring, they will foul the barrel and chamber and may lead to a function failure at some point. Also, some of the scrapings can stick in your seating die and build up and change the seating depth you are using. A second problem will be less hold on the bullet as the crimp now has a scraped off and narrowed the bullet body under the crimp.
 
any danger in reseating loaded bullets?

Ok, I thought it might scrape shavings off, so I will use them and put up with the chambering problem. The depth of the ones that work is about 0.12 deeper
than the ones that give problems.
It would be silly to pursue this any further.
Thanks for the replies.
I am about 80% of the way toward a regular reliable target round that I don't
need to mess with. SWC vs Hollow point is the last issue, and it looks like HP,
while more expensive, makes neat work in the target compared to SWC
 
That is a light load at 1.245".
Reseat a bullet, peel off the lead, check for setback, shoot.
How many overly long rounds have you got?
 
You can get away with a lot with SWC. Usually I load those so that 1/32" of shoulder is showing above the case mouth - that is the old school method with 1911s.
I've reseated lead and jacketed 45acp without issue. If you do have a really aggressive taper crimp then you can see a little lead shaving as Unclenick described.
 
I have about 100 overly long. They shoot fine for 3 or so shots, jam, drop the clip, extract the offender, replace the clip, shoot 3 or 4 more, etc. you can
see why I asked the question.
What is odd is that the press came to me already set up for SWC, and the dude that sold me the press is considered an expert in reloading (different site from this one), he does not shoot a lot of 45, however.
I will do a few as was suggested, and see if I get any lead shaving either on the round on left in the dies, if I don't get any, I will reseat, if I do, repeat the
scheme above.
I shoot 200 rounds a week in a good week, so not an insurmountable task either way.:cool:
 
Reseat a bullet, peel off the lead, check for setback, shoot.
Click to expand...

This is what I would do. IF deeper seating does shave a ring of lead just peel it off the round, so it doesn't go into the gun. Should be fine. otherwise.

Do check bullet tension, to be sure the bullet won't go any deeper into the case.

have fun, go play! Be safe!
 
I should have mentioned taking the ring off as a solution. It's just a bother. I have done it for cases I accidentally failed to flare adequately (another source of this issue) by taking a sharp pocket knife and cutting a diagonal across the end of a popsicle stick, then using the narrow chisel-shaped "point" of the long side of the diagonal to sort of plow the lead off by turning the round in my fingers.

The guy who sold you the press may have had that setup work fine in his gun. Precision headspacing isn't much of a thing on 1911's and some folks also throat the chambers, changing the dynamic further. So what worked great for him will not necessarily work for you. What I have always found most accurate and to feed best and that leaves the least metal fouling in the bore is to seat lead bullets out to contact the throat as the headspace (third image from left, below). These bullets don't make such a pronounced plunk as ones that let the case mouth hit the end of the chamber, but they sure do shoot. That said, your gun does have to be set up to feed well and not be picky about what it feeds.

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For whatever it's worth, I seat my 200 LSWC's to 1.240." I also use 5.0gn W231, so I wouldn't worry about the charge being too strong. Unclenick mentioned the lead scrapy thing and so it's not ideal. But it'll give you 100 range shooters.

I have needed to do a deeper seat a time or two myself over the decades. It happens.
 
danger in reseating loaded bullets?

Boy, do you ever get an education on this site!
I hope to be able to contribute one day.
Nick, I thought the 45 headspace on the cartridge, not the bullet? Am I missing something here? The SWC have a shoulder, but the HP do not. I loaded HP's to the same OAL as the SWC and they shot 100% fine.
 
"Nick, I thought the 45 headspace on the cartridge, not the bullet? Am I missing something here? The SWC have a shoulder, but the HP do not. I loaded HP's to the same OAL as the SWC and they shot 100% fine."

To answer this question first, most .45 ACP cases are actually shorter than the trim to length. As least that's what I've seen over the tears so reloaders using semiwadcutter bullet seat that so at the headspace on the shoulder of the bullet rather than the cartridge case. It works just fine in my 1911.

On your original question though, when you had one of the cartridges hang up, did you push on the slide to try and seat the bullet? You might give that a try if you haven't already done so. If that works, then you shouldn't have to increase the seating depth all that much. Maybe a quarter to a half turn on the seating stem screw.
Paul B.
 
any danger in reseating loaded bullets?

Paul, I generally can force a round into the chamber after I
drop the mag, as you suggest, so this shortening I have done is working, so I must be seating on the shoulder? I gauge most of my work for length, primer seating and the old spin and plunk, although I use a Dillon gage a lot also. Even the offenders
pass all the above.
One turn of the seating die is 0.0714 in. That does not
produce any lead shavings, haven't tried two turns yet.:cool:
 
Ok, OAL on two runs of 20 was 1.228 and 1.200. No lead
shaving on either run and none left in the bullet die.
The 1.200 was dead level with the case mouth.
test on Tuesday.
 
When I shot on the USN Rifle Team, used a Lyman 310 nutcracker to seat arsenal match ammo bullets a few thousandths deeper and vertical shot stringing at longer ranges got reduced.
 
this is getting a bit far from the initial post, I will end my participation with the
test results: Polymer coated SWC a 1.120 chambered perfectly, all 40 rounds
were fine, had one hitch with the 1.128 batch, but only one.
I had some FMJ that I wanted to shoot just to get the brass, they were leftovers
from early Covid purchases, and they gave me all kinds of chambering problems, and they were reloads by Ammo Inc. Go figure.
Anyhow, all is well with SWC and HP.:cool:
 
As Paul B. noted, 45 Auto tends to run short, and the more times you reload them, the shorter they get. I once follow some new bulk Winchester brass through 50 reloadings of light target loads. The ones not split or lost to the range at the end were 0.025" shorter than when they started out, so they lost about half a thousandth at each load cycle and would no longer headspace on the case mouth properly. So headspacing on the bullet is an off-book alternative method, but it works well and produces terrific velocity consistency, provided the nose shape still feeds when sticking out far enough to headspace on the throat.

The other time people have done that was when roll-crimping lead 45 Auto bullets, digging the crimp right into them. A lot of the old-time bull's-eye shooters claimed that always produced the best accuracy, even if it wore cases out and prevent headspacing on the case mouth. Try it for yourself to see.

You didn't mention what your gun is, so I don't know if it is one you can get a reliability job done on. If it is a 1911, you can almost certainly get improved feed reliability from doing that.
 
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