Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles reloading dies

I want to start reloading for my 20in. 1/8 twist varmint/target barreled AR. I've been using Redding dies and wonder if I'd see much more accuracy from the more expensive comp type dies over a basic set? What's does a taper crimp die in the national match set do?

You won't see much improvement... but if you wanted top line accuracy down to the tenth.. every bit helps..

I load match winning ammo with a redding bushing FL die and a FOrster seater....

Knowing how to set them up correctly and check run out is much more important IMHO.

As to crimp, and I'll get slaughtered again... BUT I've NEVER crimped a 223 round for ANY of my 223 rifles, and I"ve never had a non crimp related failure. UNLESS you have perfect necks, concentric and same thickness, and exactly the same length, a crimp will generally not do you any good because the amount of crimp applied is different to each round, and hence the pull tension is different from fired round to fired round.
I prefer to test tension vs accuracy with differing sizes of neck bushings.. proving the point that differing tensions make variances in the resultant accuracy.

Bottom line you don't see BR folks crimping and I know of no one running an AR and winning highpower matches that crimps either.

YMMV

Get the Redding bushing die and comp seating die. What Jeff said about crimping and proper neck tension with appropriate bushings is spot on. I use 3 different brands of brass in .223 and I have a bushing for each one. Don't mix your brass.

"As to crimp, and I'll get slaughtered again... BUT I've NEVER crimped a 223 round for ANY of my 223 rifles, and I"ve never had a non crimp related failure."

I have to ask, why are you so against it, when you've never tried it?
As for the Lee crimp die, case length doesn't matter and there was one guy who won a long range competition using their die but I forget who he was...

And I've said before, if you know your neck tension, you don't need to crimp, you are correct but if you've seen some factory reloads like ultramax with bullets shoved down in the case, then a crimp die doesn't look too bad.

"slaughtered"? I doubt it, just giving you a hard time and comparing different notes, of course I've used the Lee crimp die and found no ill effect on accuracy. Maybe I've just read too many reports of AR kabooms and am gunshy...

Funny you brought that up...I had some Ultramax that I ran through my Predator Pursuit just to get it on paper the first time I sighted it in. They ran fine for a few rounds, and then one of the projectiles was shoved up into the cartridge case. Powder spilled into the lower and gummed up the works something awful. I load my own for hunting, and I use the factory crimp die from Lee. I've gotten great accuracy; nothing like Rost is looking for, but MOA for hunting. I have not had another slug pushed into the case when the action cycled, and I used the crimp on my remaining Ultramaxes as well. It made a heck of a mess in my lower, and it took some cleaning to get that mess out of there.

TWR... I don't run factory ammo... so thats never an issue with me, simply cannot afford to. I can't recall shooting a factory round in any of my single projectile firearms probably since the late 70s...

As to teh crimp die working on all lenghts of brass.. I have 2 of their crimp dies just to see... I played with the 223 one and differing length brass... there is no way it crimps the same amount... you can watch the gaps in the fingers and see that its not the same....

but yes you are right about me not running crimped stuff because I have no reason to.. but the crimped rounds that I have tried in the same lee 270 dies for my buddies dads autoloader... lets just say the crimp doesnt' do anything for the quality of the load at all... I bought it just to try it one more time... and I have better accuracy without the crimp by far.

I think a lot of that has to do with picking and choosing good combos of powder, primer, and bullet to start with though..

LongRanger280.... i see your oxymoron there.. I get great accuracy..... appx moa.... grins...

BTW you can't get a bullet shoved back if you are using a full case of powder, which actually tends to help your accuracy anyway....

Bottom line to me... a crimp does no good, isn't a magic solution and if you are doing things right to start with there is just no reason to look for a magic bandaid... but some folks do not approach it that way, look for loads that run with the least amount of powder to save money, have no clue what neck tension is and use cheap bullets to top it off..... without neck tension, I could see that a crimp might be the best way to attempt to fix those issues.

I've loaded .223's since the early '70's, never crimped, never had a problem. That's with Mini-14's and AR's. A couple of years ago I saw some Remington UMC stuff with 50 grain HP's on sale at Walmart for less than the cost of new brass so bought it for the brass and plinking ammo. I learned real fast not to shoot the stuff in my AR's. Those 50 grain HP's were getting shoved down into the case. Had to finish emptying the new brass in my bolt gun.

That bullet set back is a pain. The quick cure for that is a bushing type neck size only die. You can tighten them up with little effort.

I recommend the Redding type S FL bushing sets for the ability to mix and match the neck tension for different ammo.

Also if you happen to accidentally not move the shoulders back enough on a bunch of cartridges for a rifle or need ammo for a tighter chamber you can re-lube the rounds and pull the bushing out of the die and just bump the shoulders back. (Ask me how my 20 Tactical dies learned that!! LOL)

Greg