Thread: 44 Magnum crimp
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Old 11-14-2020, 09:06 AM
rockquarry rockquarry is offline
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I think most handloaders crimp more than necessary. There is no standard of degree for crimping; we eyeball the crimp and call it light, moderate, or heavy, but those varying levels of crimps don't have the same meaning for everyone.

Regardless of the type crimp used, crimp enough to prevent bullet movement under recoil and no more. Many would be surprised how little crimp is really required. If bullets stay in place and you're getting good accuracy and velocity is where it should be, you're fine. Powder burn should be okay, but if not, experiment a little.

This takes some work to get everything just right, but it's a one-time process that's worth the effort. Extreme spread and standard deviation are numbers not worth worrying about unless the numbers are incredibly wild. If they are the load will likely not shoot well anyway.

There are exceptions to everything, but the above process has worked well for me. I only use cast bullets in handgun cartridges, but everything described should also work for jacketed bullets as well.
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