Can you spin a bullet in your casing BEFORE using your crimp/seater die? If you can you have your flaring die set up incorrectly and are expanding the case WAY WAY too deep. BTW, if so don't feel bad about this good, it's actually pretty common for a newbie.
What the flare die is intended to do is put a very slight flare on the very end of the case. This will allow a bullet to be started in the case to a depth of somewhere between 1/32 and 1/16 inch. So, back off on your flaring die until the flare on your case is almost not visible to the naked eye. As noted the best test is to put a fresh bullet in the flared mouth of the case, with a bullet featuring a radius on the base it should drop in about 1/16 inch, with a bullet featuring a square corner at the base 1/32 inch is about right.
Now for setting up the seating/crimp die. There are several approaches but the one I've found easiest is to back both the lock ring and seater stem well up from the die opening. Then place a properly flared case in the press and bring the ram up. Next screw in the die until you feel the drag as it contacts the case. Drop the ram and screw the die down 5 flats as observed on the hex nut for the seater stem. Now hold the die in this position and bring the lock ring down so it locks the die in place and tighten down the lock ring. At this point you have the crimp portion of the die putting a crimp about 1/16 inch on the case.
The next step is to adjust the seating stem. This WILL require some trial and error, so plan on building at least 2 or 3 dummy rounds. Make sure the seater stem is screwed out as far as possible. Place a bullet in an empty case and insert it in your press and run the ram up. Now take the seater stem and start screwing it down until you feel the drag of it contacting the tip of your bullet. Now, for a bit of math. Your seater stem features a 1/2-20 thread so one full turn of your seater stem is equal to 0.050 inch. I just measured the overall length of a 230 gn. FMJ round nose inserted into a flared case and the length of this loosely assembled round is 1.472 inch. Since I like to load my 230 grain 45 ACP hard balls to a length of 1.260 inch this means that for my setup the seater stem would require 4 full turns to produce a length of 1.272 inch. So, I would recommend that you turn your seater stem in exactly 3 1/2 turns and then press a bullet into the case and measure the overall length of the result. If you find your length is too long by say 0.03 inch, then you need to screw your seater stem in by 3/5 turns. To make it easy to do this take 3/5 x 6 which results in 3.6 flats on your 6 pointed lock nut. So, take it in 3 1/2 flats on the lock nut. Now make up a fresh text round and measure the overall length of the result. Any final tweak to length should be pretty minor.
Now, for what I look for in a crimp. First, if you are loading with lead or soft jacketed bullets you may see a ring of material pushed up by the edge of the case during the crimp. Unfortunately with some bullets the only way to eliminate this completely is by separating the Seat and Crimp operation. BTW, this is
NOT a problem with Extreme Plated bullets, that plating of theirs is actually hard enough that a combined seat/crimp wont shave off the plating.
If you want to keep using a single Seat/Crimp setup the what you will need to do is basically set the crimp so that all it does is remove the flare on the case. Start by backing the crimp die out 1/2 turn and see what happens. If you get a zero flare/zero crimp then readjust the lock ring position on your die and tweak the seater stem in by 3-4 flats.
If you are using a bullet that can tolerate a combined Seat/Crimp then you want to measure the diameter of the case at the
very edge of the case. I look for this diameter to be between 0.002 and 0.003 inch smaller than the diameter of the case at the midpoint of the bullet bulged area.
PS; if you don't have some digital calipers see the following link, they work well, feature an auto off, and an absolute zero at a very reasonable price.
Production Tool Supply
