They need to be seated with something flat that will put uniform pressure all across the nose. I found that out with the first batch I tried to load many years ago; the SWC seater plug caused stress cracks and failures around the circumference of the nose. I don't have a flat seater plug so now use a ******* file held against the bottom of the crimp die. I seat the capsules by pushing up against the file, then pull the file out of the way and run the cartridge up into the crimp die. This is not too cumbersome considering how few of these I load nowadays.

Which leads me to something else: they need to be used with a taper crimp die. A roll crimp, again, stresses them and they are subject to cracking around the case mouth. Yours will definitely need to be handled with care since they have already been through this once. If you were able to pull them out with your fingers, they would have backed out during recoil and caused all sorts of problems.



A bit OT, but with #9, the .38/.357 caps hold around 110; the .44's hold around 200. Smaller shot would be better for most uses. A convenient suggestion for some #12 is to remove the shot from some loaded shotgun shells such as those Rio brand sold by Cheaper Than Dirt. The 12 gauge loads are 1 ounce X 25 rounds/box. The .38 caps hold around 110 grains and an ounce of shot is around 437 grains, so one 12 gauge shell provides nearly enough for 4 capsules.

I have recently made up a small batch using 3 #1 buckshot in the .38 capsules and the "pattern" holds up farther than you would think. A small amount of some shot buffer in the nose is needed to keep the topmost pellet from jumping forward and cracking the end of the capsule during recoil.

We gotta tinker now and then.