Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles 223 seater die help

I have just started loading 223 Rem shells to help cut the cost of shooting down. I am having a problem with the Vmax bullets poly tips being shaved off on 1 side when I seat the bullet. Do I have the die set up wrong or is it possibly a bad set of dies? I don't notice it when seating Sierra blitz bullets, nor with FMJ bullets (of course) that I have.

Taking the die apart and checking out the seater stem would be the place to start. Lee?

I knew I was gonna forget that, not Lee but RCBS......

Well, I guess it kant be the dies, must be the press. Lee?

Pull the seater and check to see if the cup contacts the tip of the bullet or the ogive. The contact should be on the ogive.
I`ve had tipped bullets bottom out in the cup and tip to the side during seating. The case mouth didn`t shave copper but the runout was terrible.

I had a similar problemn with my rcbs 223 rem bullet seating die. On the first 20 rounds of lead tipped varmint bullets it shaved the side off of about 5. My solution was to back the cup out as far as possible and screw the die out to achieve the propper seating depth. I'm concerned that the run out might be pretty high too, but I don't have a cocentricity guage and they seem to shoot pretty good so I'm just letting it go till I come up with a better solution. The next 400 rounds seemed alright with about 1 per hundred having a shaved tip.

I had the exact same problem with my RCBS 223 seater; I switched to a Redding Competition seating die and all problems were solved. Not a cheap piece of equipment, but it works extremely well with Vmax's.

The most likely cause of this problem is an insufficent chamfer to the case mouth, closely followed by insufficent expander button diameter.

Well I backed out the seater stem and adjusted the die and then tried again today, and it seemed to work. I tried both vmaxes and the sierras and I didn't have that trouble anymore! Thanks for the help!!!