Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Crimping

Accuracy is related to neck tension by far. Thats why I'm concerned. Crimping affects a TINY portion of the neck. Neck sizing correctly affects the complete neck.

Anyone that shoots enough, knows that both accurayc and case life are important, it takes some work to get accurate cases, I don't want to shoot em a few times and toss em at that point. Generally good for National type matches for 5 firings, more normal stuff for another 5 like state/regional matches and then another 10 or so for practice short range stuff like 200 yard or 300 yard only matches.

I looked at your link. First I've never been impressed with accurate's sight. If you can find me a similar one from 6mm br I'd like to see that.

But it notes that ES and SD doesn't change much. That tells me that consistency is not really becoming better.

And then who said that they worked on neck tension for the uncrimped rounds?

bottom line, both are searching for the ideal tension for accuracy. But the crimping folks think is for safety more so. As noted those that have shot enough have seen crimped only bullets moved on chambering. And those that pay correct attention to neck tension generally come up wiht better results.

RE comments on revolver rounds. I never found a neck sizing way to control revolver rounds so I do crimp on those, but if I found a way to work neck tension I'd sure try that. but then those are such short range rounds, generally 100 yards or less its not that critical to accuracy that a crimp can substitute nicely.

Has anyone compared taper crimping to the Lee FCD in accuracy or holding power? I have both and though I normally don't crimp, I have started doing it for the AR. With either one, I can detect a difference in contact during the crimp even with freshly trimmed cases. Makes me wonder if the crimp is uniform. One thing, the Lee FCD will put a groove in a bullet that has no cannelure. That would seem to be a detriment to accuracy to me.

The problem is that what is good for a benchrest rifle isn't necessarily good for an auto rifle or even a bolt action sporter.

Because of tight necks and chambers, etc, crimping may be detrimental to the accuracy of a benchrest rifle. But that doesn't mean it is bad for all the other rifles out there. And that doesn't even mean that it can't improve the accuracy of other rifles.

One time I spent alot of effort trying to get a bolt action sporter to shoot better. I weighed charges, sorted cases, neck turned cases, spun cases, reamed primer pockets, etc. Turned out that NONE of that made the rifle provably any more accurate at 200 yds than just dumping a charge of W748 and topping it with a 52gr Matchking. In fact, I think that neck turning actually hurt the accuracy.

yes. It helps or does not hurt.

Maybe you could have avoided all that by just crimping with the LFCD and been done. Just think how much time and money you could have saved. Not to mention how many more matches you could have won. But we will never know as you have no experience with the LFCD, just words and theory.

Jeff, here is one for $30! I did not believe it myself before I tried it.

http://www.amazon.com/Lee-Precision...r=8-1&keywords=lee+factory+crimp+die

Jimmy

I can get em for that and less. Just that I have my solutions done with no need for crimping. So no need. Thanks for the link though.

Steve
I'll sure pass that along to all my High Master friends and if I ever start up shooting again, it'll be 1000 yards with the service rifle AR15 in 223 with 90 jlks, I'll be sure to grab a crimp die at that time and see what I can manage with it. It may well save me hours of work and lots of research trying to do it where I got more bearing surface on the bullet to control tension areas vs a small ring. And that ring then on the bullet probably won't affect the BC in flight either. But then again we are talking shooting matches vs just plinking for most folks.

PS has anyone run the X die to limit case growth. We found from others, IE again not me, just taking the word of top ranked folks shooting that I also trust, that it was not worth the effort.

But there may be more data out there now.

I would agree with that assessment.

I pretty much run mine as a "normal" die. It mashes down the case mouth, so you have to chamfer the case anyway. Tumbling/polishing does the same thing. Since I trim & chamfer in 1 operation, it saves me nothing. With a Gracey or similar, I pretty much just trim them after every sizing.

Ah, sarcasm, Gotta love it when it's tit-for-tat.

No thats not sarcasm at all. Its the truth.

I'll certainly try it. For all the junk that Lee puts out, there are some almost gems out there. One powder measure is such, at 19 bucks or so IIRC, its a plastic POS like a lot of their stuff but damn thing does better at big stick powder than my expensive ones.

Then there is the primer tool..... I've got better ones, but ran them for years, just got them to send 2-3 of the parts that bent/broke all the time, ahead of time so in a batch of 2-3000 rounds i wasn't stopped cold by a bend or break.

And so the crimp die may be an ok thing too. Will never know until I run it. I've never had a need to because the correct way to solve the issues are other methods as I've continually noted. But if I start up again, that will be time to compare crimped and none. I've NO idea how I'd do a fair apples to apples at this point, but will figure that out later.

Right now costs and components are stupid... and I'm still a few years out from being able to have the time to play again some. And then I"ll have to cover the vision issue first again.

But if I get that far I'll certainly look at it.

In the meantime I'll talk with active shooters again. Ones that are actually capable of seeing changes. Not just run of the mill and see if I can get some of them to play again.

I'd have to see about the crimp ring bothering the BC of the bullet, I can't recall ever seeing the drag photos of one with a crimp ring around it. But then tip damage doesn't do as much as many think, well up close it doesn't. Out further it is very obvious.

I do think that damage to the boattail is the WORST overall place to do that, so its very possible that the damage a crimp has to a bullet may not be that much.

AND to be very lucky, I have a goal at 1000 yards, and if you are ever able to see variables, 1000 will show them pretty quickly.