distortion ring on bullet while seating

S

skinny2

New member
Hi, I am reloading some 17 remington fireball cartridges. I am getting a ring on the bullet from seating the bullet. I am using redding series B dies. I have tried 25 grain v max and 25 grain hollow points. I chamfered the inside more than usual, i brushed out the neck, tried sizing lube on the bullets, tried annealing the cases, the inside neck sizer is .170. I used a little sandpaper on the die thinking it just had a sharp edge. You can see the indentation into the bullet from seating. Any ideas that I should try?? getting very frustrated.

I checked the inside neck diameter after sizing and get .168

do I need to move the deprimer down farther? have it set just to pop the primer out.
 
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I loaded a dummy round and smeared the bullet with Flitz, then spun it in the seating stem. It helped a lot, but my ring is still barely there. I bet if I do it again it will go away completely. RCBS standard 17Rem die set purchased new early this year.
 
.chances are a minor ring mark will make little to no difference.in flight.

The deprimer pin being moved should also have no effect
 
The die is not set to crimp. Reddings reply was to buy the micrometer seater for VLD bullets. I may try the flitz first.
 
Originally Posted By: skinny2The die is not set to crimp. Reddings reply was to buy the micrometer seater for VLD bullets. I may try the flitz first.

Of course it was, then they make more money.

In my experience, limited compared to some others, the ring has no ill effect on accuracy. It is kind of annoying/ugly and i would rather it not occur but since i havnt noticed anything negative from it i havnt done anything to fix it
 
I get the ring on the vmax & Nosler BT bullets & mostly w/the .243 & 7-08 bullets if the neck has not been deburred and the bullet is tight into the neck.
It has yet to have any effect on my targets.
 
I take a small polishing pad out of my dremel kit and taper it down to a point. I use a piece of sand paper and hold it at an angle with the dremel running until I shape it down to a point.

Then I use it to polish (flitz) the inside of the seater. I've done this on 2 dies. I reduced the rings but never actually completely got rid of them

Good luck
 
I think the neck tension on the brass plays in to this as well. The higher the neck tension, the more force required from the stem to seat the bullet and as such the outermost edge of the stem will tattoo the bullet jacket. Perhaps the diameter of the expander ball on the sizing die is leaving the necks slightly undersized thereby increasing the neck tension. I have a redding comp seater for my 22-250 that does this as well. Like everyone else I polished it, but the ring remains. No I'll effects however.
 
I know where you're coming from.

I too used to get these rings. Who the he*ll wants to do a nice set of ammo with a bunch of ugly a$$ rings on the bullets? I ended up buying some 1000, and 2000 grit sandpaper from Walmart. I shaped it into a cone and took my cordless drill and went to town on the seating stem part of the die. It makes the internals of that stem really shine. This got rid of those ugly rings for me. I hope this helps you.
 
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