308 confuzzled...

[Tweetywill]

I just finished off a box of the Hornady ELD-X 178gr in .308, and I liked them so much I ordered another 100. But a weird thing happened with the first 20.

When I placed the bullet and set it in the press, I noticed that it was waaay too easy to pull, and the bullet was way too deep. I pulled it out of the press and grabbed it with my fingers and it came right out of the case!

I found that I could push it in and out easily. I checked the ten or so that I had already loaded, and a couple of them were also loose. I continued through twenty, and of those, 7 were too big to properly seat the bullet.

Various headstamps, some of the same that were loose were also seated properly!

Ideas? Is my sizing die screwy? (I used the RCBS full-length sizer on all of them). I am baffled. Should I pull the decapping pin and try again? Or are they bad brass?

Any thoughts are welcome.

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[Tweetywill]

...only figgered out how to attach pics after initial post. So here are the old and new bullet boxes and the loose brass headstamps.

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[xH8machinex]

I had this same issue with my lee dies for 7.62x39. My decap pin wasn't set right and the cases weren't being fully resized. Wobbly bullets when seated.

So I pulled the decal pin and reset it. Had to resize the 200 brass I had ready to go. Not too bad of a fix though.

Good luck!

[Travis21]

Yeah, like H8machinex said, always check die setup first. Most likely it’s your decapping pins. Try disassembling your dies and then following the RCBS instructions for setting them up. Sometimes stiff brass or being dropped or things like that can bump them around to the point where they won’t work right.

[Tweetywill]

You know what? You are both right. I decided to pull the decapping pin to try and re-re-size (since the brass was already primed and I didnt want to waste the primers) and the screw that secures the decapping pin was completely loose. I pulled the pin out, adjusted and tightened the rest and ran the brass through again. Voila! Bullets fit properly.

Next problem - I kept loading the re-re-sized brass until I ran out of powder. :-(

Too bad Wes doesnt sell that! :-)

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[Clopez]

Glad to hear you got it figured out!! Now you can work on powder issue lol.


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