Thread: STRAIGHTENING A CROOKED BULLET

Originally Posted by grandpamac

Greetings All,
John Barsness, one of my favourite handloading writers, had an article in Handloader mag recently. He looked at reasons for projectile run out and identified the expander ball as a significant culprit. He got better results by sizing the case with the expander ball removed and then expanding the neck by running the expander ball into the case just through the neck and back out again. Obviously you need to remove the spent primer first which I do with a Lee punch and base set anyway. The reason given is that only part of the rim is supported when pulling the case out of the die but the whole head is when pushing it in. Also make sure that you chamfer the inside of the neck before loading including new brass.
Regards Grandpamac.

I have been doing that for a very long time

The taper on Redding expanders is the wrong way around to be pulled back through a neck first

I ALWAYS use the expander as a seperate operation pushing it down through the neck first

That minimises runout to almost zero

And don’t forget when measuring runout it’s not the sum total measured, halve it as your wanting to know the offset from centre

Very very few remember that……..and it’s often taught incorrectly