Just bought a super swager 600 , any tips ?

[Metal god]

Cratering update

I've now done several hundred cases and I thought at just the right angle and light I was seeing cratering even at minimal swaging to get a primer to seat freely .

So I did a quick little test of using a sanding stone on the case heads before swaging , after swaging at desired adjustment , adjusting for even more swage and this is what I think I've been seeing .

Before swaging you can see the sanding stone pretty much sands the whole surface of the case head .

After swaging at desired adjustment you can see the crater ring that has been removed while leaving the center area between the rim edge and crater ring untouched .

Adjusting for more swage shows the crater ring even more so it appears swaging with this tool and maybe all swagers like this does crater the primer pocket no matter how light the swage as long as it's enough to seat the primer with out binding .

Now to find out if that really maters or not . My next test will be to FL size and trim several cases before swaging . Then measure case length of before and after swaging and see how much of a variance there is and if I'll be willing to except what ever that may be .

Some may say who cares it can't be that bad/much , that may be true . How ever this is a 1300ct lot of LC-17 cases which I had planed to do a full match prep to . Meaning FL sizing with a .003 bump then trim and uniforming the primer pocket depth . How much the crater effects those measurements if at all does matter to me . Also to consider If I size and trim first first before swaging will that make a difference . My experience tells me if the swaging is creating only about .001 of a crater . Sizing and trimming first then swage may still work because I know the bolt slamming home will set the shoulder back if need be to chamber . Meaning if my shoulder bump is .oo3 and my crater is .0015 tall leaving me with a net measurement of .0015 shoulder bump as far as headspace and case fit is concerned . I believe my BCG will still fully close and the rifle still be safe to fire .

Hmm over think things much

 

[Unclenick]

That's what I'm talking about. If you load and shoot once, that crater wall will be flattened out against your bolt face. As to whether it will affect the precision of that first shot, I doubt it because the problem is symmetrical. That is, it won't tend to introduce off-axis forces that would add an off-axis recoil moment into the movement of the rifle barrel while the bullet is traveling down the bore. However, it will change the timing of the case head impact with the bolt face and that might affect exact sweet spot timing, so you'll have to test for it. As with all reloading variables, don't trust; just verify.

 

[Metal god]

If you load and shoot once, that crater wall will be flattened out against your bolt face. As to whether it will affect the precision of that first shot, I doubt it because the problem is symmetrical.

What's the chance it flattens out the head on the first firing and by doing so puts a little crimp back in the pocket . My thinking if I do minimal swage will the pocket get tighter after the first firing because that crater is pushed back into the pocket ? I guess the question is - should I swage a little more to allow for that possibility ?

 

[Unclenick]

It does. Out of a hundred that are swaged deeply, I'll find a couple that need to be swaged again before smooth primer seating occurs, and then they are OK after that. The way to do it is to decap and clean the cases and then check the state of the pocket diameter with one of these.