Buckled case wall,happened while crimping.

I was loading up some of DW's home swaged 44mag bullets for testing. All went well except for one case buckled while crimping the bullet. All the cases were resized and trimmed to the same length.

I guess the case had a weak wall on the side that buckled...strange things can happen. Here is a pic of the oddity. It didn't even begin to apply the crimp before it buckled.



All the cases were either Federal or PPU...the one that bucked was an oddball stamped G.F.L.

Wow, that is an oddity. I have never seen anything like that before. Is the first one you have that has done this? Are you using a lee factory crimp die? Wonder if maybe the case mouth may have caught onto the enterance of the crimp die and buckled if it is the lee fcd??

Just trying to wrap my head around this....

No...I use the bullet seating die(Lyman)...I seat the bullets, then re-adjust the die and go back through and set the crimp. This is the first time I have ever seen this happen, so I posted it to share it. The case was up in the die when it happened. It felt different than the rest while crimping and when I backed out to take a look, that is what I found.

Ah interesting.... I am at a lost!! Thanks for showing. Hope an answer is found. This will haunt me for some time now....

Don't let it haunt you,lol. I'm just going to call it a rare oddity and a defective piece of brass.

One thing I have to say....the home swaged 44mag bullets of DW's using 40cal cases for jackets seat very easily. You don't even have to flare the case mouth to aid in seating....skipping that step saved a whole lot of time.

I guess I need to look a little harder at the CH4D swaging dies.

I find that to be so when loading myself. I know the head does not swage out as much as the body portion. They do take the riflings very well...

One downside with ch right now, they are about 8 months behind on their dies. Seems that they had a huge rush and large qty orders that it just overwhelmed them. I know of one guy that bought up alot of just the empty bodies and turned down grade 8 bolts to use as a harder punch for them...

several things could cause your problem#1have you checked all of ypur case lingth.#2some time the case can go in a little sideways #3THE BASEof the bullet could have a burr.$ there could be a little grit in the case mouth.
on straight wall cases i like the lee. it clamps as you know and even if the cases are to long it wont mash the case walls. qp

look at the left side of the case. the bell is off.my guess thats the prob. qp

Occasionally I get one that does too. I usually mark it as an oddity and run it back through the sizer with a generous dab of lube and shoot it in one of the TC single shots.

Afterwards I look at the case and might discard the cartridge if it appears to be tweaked.

I'm loading some heavy 276 gr .444 Marlin over a stiff charge and 4895 right now, and every now & then I get one that buckles a tad.

I believe it is because some of these .444 Marlin cases I got abit to excited with the expander die and might have belled the mouth too much. This wide mouth might strike the edge of the die body and tweak the case.

Well now I know why my order of new dies and TiN work is taking so long for CH4D to complete. Glad to hear they are busy rather than laying folks off at the Holidays like some other places were (caugh caugh TC, S&W, etc.)

My first inital thought was maybe too much crimp. But that left realy quick as none of the others had done it making that the one and only...

it happened to me couple times on factory stuff, when using thin brass, the things that will agitate the issue for me are brass trim length, canelure depth(if the cannelure isn't as deep as the other bullets you will have less room for roll crimp and it will act like you have too much crimp adjusted in your die), and bullet seating depth, if the brass wasn't situated in the right spot on the cannelure for me, it would be too much crimp and buckle cause there wasn't any room for the roll crimp to roll.

it looks like the neck isn't in the cannelure completely, looks like it's situated at the bottom edge of the cannelure but idunno, could just be a fluke brass case,
good luck let us know how it goes,

CMAsailer is the winner here.... I did it again last night. While adjusting for proper crimp, I went a little too far and and guess what...the case buckled

Yes, DW...you where right on with your thoughts as well with this post

My first inital thought was maybe too much crimp. But that left realy quick as none of the others had done it making that the one and only...

I guess that oddball case above and federal cases don't respond well to over crimping,lol.

Glad to see mystery solved!! Thanks for the update...

Yeah, mystery solved...I'm human afterall,LOL

You can go ahead and lock this thread...but if you would leave it on here for awhile, just in case anyone else runs into the same problem.

I've had this happen before when I tried to seat and crimp all in the same step, that's when I made it a separate operation with the Lee FCD.......problem was solved. You should have seen the very first one I did........it looked like an accordion.


Glad you figured it out.......Newbie!

I will just mark them solved instead of locking. These threads will be left for a long time tho to help future members...

G.F.L is Fiocchi ammo. G.F.L = Guilio Fiocchi - Lecco
http://www.fiocchiusa.com