I read somewhere that when reloading Remington 148g HBWC for .38 Special, you should use a universal decapping die instead of resizing the brass, so as not to shave lead when seating the bullet. Does any one out there do this? Does it improve accuracy?

Hello --You did not say what you were going to shoot the ammo out of. What ever the size of the bore the lead needs to be .001 over. You have to slightly bell the mouth to not shave the lead. I have four 38 autos and all shoot a little different load. A revolver is not so picky and you can stick the bullet out a little. I tapper crimp to the same dia. of the od of the resized brass. Make sure the brass is the same brand. Resizing the brass helps to hold the lead to the same pressure. If you do not resize the brass you will have to roll crimp to hold the lead in place. Mine likes about 725-750 fps.

Thanks for your reply.

I shoot them out of a number of different revolvers. I seat the bullets flush with the case mouth & use a light roll crimp with a Lee Factory Crimp die. I have always resized & slightly belled the mouth before seating. I usually use Speer bullets & recently bought a quantity of Remington. My question was if there was an advantage to using the universal decapping die instead of my Lee resizing die with the Remington.

If you will shoot 38 Spl wadcutter loads from different revolvers, you should take some steps to make sure they'll chamber in all of them. Since you have a Lee FCD, take the guts out of it and use it for a sizing die. This way you won't have any cases too large to chamber in every gun. The case mouth does need to be belled slightly to allow seating lead bullets. You'll need a light crimp to hold the bullets in the case during recoil. I've tried unsized cases and found that some bullets would simply slide fully into the case. I think they only did that to piss me off.

I was afraid they could slip all the way in. Thanks for the info.

I never heard of this. You have to resize your brass so you have the proper tension even when using a wadcutter bullet. As with all lead bullets you need to flair the mouth slightly to get the bullet started. This will not effect accuracy and a slight crimp will remove the flair. Not sizing your brass might be dangerous because the bullet might setback even though revolver bullets usually pull.

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Light target loads seldom expand brass near the bottom of the case like high pressure loads.........but even though the mouth of the case might not expand with very light target loads,it still needs to be sized for minimal brass tension on the lead bullet,when it is belled to accept the over size bullet diamiter.
Brass expands and contracts during firing and needs to be set
or adjusted to a "Standard" demention for it to work properly in reloading. "Working" the brass will lead to cracks and splits later on,down the road but that is one of the things that just happens,when loading is done correctly.

Good shooting.

Thanks for the replies. I'll keep using my resizing/decapping dies.

I've used just about every brand of .38 HBWC's over the years and am currently using Remington's. I've never heard of not resizing the brass, but I have found that the Remington 148 grain HBWC's are somewhat greater in diameter than the other brands. They therefore require greater flaring or belling of the case mouth prior to seating the bullets, otherwise lead shaving will occur.

I use either a light roll or taper crimp and seat the bullets flush with the case mouth. This gives excellent results in a variety of revolvers and a Model 52.