Are 22 TCM supposed to have tight necks ??

P

pastprime

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I was helping a friend set up his Lee dies for 22 TCM this afternoon and it seems that the necks are very tight after sizing. The Armscor bullets would not seat without deforming the nose. He bought a Lee 2 die set with no expander and I'm wondering if that is a "must have" die for this caliber. The sizing die is set to touch plus 1/2 turn and the cases drop in easily. Would getting an expander die solve the problem or is there something that can be done with his sizing die? I've also read here that some of the seating stems are not contoured for the Armscor bullets.

Using Armscor once fired brass and their 40 gr. bullets.

All ideas and input welcomed.

Hank
 
The hornady set has a expander, I had issues, and the next ones I load I will chamfer the case mouths to help in seating the flat base bullet.
It may have a lot to do with the ratio of bullet size to finger size for me as well.
 
Yes, 22 TCM has very tight necks. It has its pluses and minuses since having such a tight neck negates the need for crimping for the most part.

It sounds to me that you have more of a seating stem issue than a neck expansion issue.
If there is a problem with necks being too tight, you will see small slivers of copper being shaved off the bullet bases.
Since you have lee dies, you may want to give Lee a call. I hear they have great customer service, (I've never called them), they will probably help you rule out the case neck vs seating stem issue.

My money is on not having the proper profile on the seating stem. My Hornady dies were the first run and the completed rounds looked like the top was sporting a nipple on a very cold day... one call to Hornady got me set up with a new seating plug that fixed that issue.

As the last post said you can try a chamfer but I doubt that's the issue unless you are also seeing a lot of copper being cut/scraped off the bullet. If that is true, then maybe revisit buying a universal 22 cal expander.
Only expand the bare minimum needed to get rid of copper rings carved out of the bullet bases, as any more will just work the brass without any benefits.
 
My first thought is measure! Measure the decapping stem expander button. Normally it runs .002" or so smaller than the bullet. And I'd measure the bullets. If the expander button is much more that .003"-.004" smaller than the bullet I'd contact Lee and check with them on what the proper dimensions of that particular cartridge should be.

Chamfering the case mouth a bit helps too...
 
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