Thread: Roll crimping 308 subs

My (limited) understanding of the roll crimp thing, is neck length, case length and also neck concentricity and wall thickness all play a bit in how consistent the crimps are. In other words, crap cases and crap case prep = crap results. Neck length all being equal affects the result with the roll crimp being shoved further in on longer cases, and if you have long and short cases (eg different rifles supplying cases with the dies set to the longest one), you can actually shove the neck of the case back into the shoulder.

The collet type crimp die seems to be by reputation more tolerant of these sort of issues e.g. more consistent in operation with variability. I have a nutjob mate (he's actually a top bloke but a bit full on) that found somewhere on the internet about swapping the bushing out of a bushing die for one a couple of sizes down or so and then using that to crimp by just tapping the neck, he seems to believe it's miles ahead of any other option. To be fair, that and the Lee collet crimper are where my experience of crimping stop and honestly after the lee crimp die I kinda swore off crimping and just avoided loading for tube mags. Never shot that much centrefire semi and never found I needed to crimp when I did.