Discussion Forums

Greg Whorlow

Hello, I was planning to write a nice piece on my journey through using Nathans books, however, I have come up against a problem that needs immediate assistance. I have read a number of reloading books, including Nathans of course, I have accumulated a lot of gear and finally found myself is a position to start reloading. I have a Lee Breach Lock press, Lee Ultimate Die set, ADI AR 2209 powder, S@B primers, 150 g Nosler Partitions, the list goes on. I am loading 270 Winchester (yes Nathan I was listening with regard to projectiles) in once fired (in my rifle) Remington brass. The Nosler’s ranged in length from 1.250 to 1.261 inches, average being 1.256, using the closest projectile to the average I checked my COAL, this came out to be 3.325 (please forgive me for having a stainless steel cleaning rod), I used a threaded screw to turn the rod into a male!

With everything set (a bit of Faithless playing in the background) I put the neck sizing die in, turned it a quarter turn once it came into contact with the shell holder and sized the brass as well as removing the used primer, all going well. Put in new primers and was thinking this reloading caper was easy. Measured out the powder (yes the Lee scales do swing like a drunken sailor on shore leave), set the seating depth to give me a COAL of 3.300, remeasured and all looking good for the first three completed bullets. As I progressed along to higher charges I noticed that the COAL on a bullet was way too short, the projectile was very loose on the neck.

I persevered and kept loading a few more bullets as I was convinced that using the Lee Crimp Die would sort out the loose fit, I discarded three shells on the way that I just couldn’t load the bullets without them slipping through. Once I had loaded all the bullets I put in the Crimp Die and crimped away. Problem is that it didn’t seem to do anything! The loose projectiles where still loose, ahhhhhhhh!!!!

Anyway, it is 37 here today (to our northern hemisphere friends that is Celsius) so I decided that I had better come in from the shed and rehydrate with some cold ones (I have continued to do this so I hope this message makes sense). So, can anybody tell me why this might be, my understanding was that the neck sizing and crimp die would fit automatically as long as I screwed them into the press correctly.

A few things to note, I have some very sophisticate laboratory scales and the 10 Nosler’s I weighed were between 9.70 grams (149.694 grains) to 9.72 grams (150.0025 grains), unbelievable that they could all weigh so similar. However, when I measured the projectile diameter I found them to be all 0.276 inches, one thousand under 0.277. As a matter of reference I measured from Speer TNT 90 grain projectiles I recently got (I thought it would be interesting to see what a fox (or skippy’s head) looked like after getting hit by one going at 3,600 feet per second)! The Speer projectiles were all 0.277 in diameter, this makes me think the callipers are about right. To further reference this I measured some factory ammo, these also ranged from 0.276 to 0.277.

I think that’s all, can anybody help, have I make a simple rooky mistake, is the fact the projectiles only 0.276 the issue?

Looking forward to hearing from you all.

Cheers