Are bullets started crooked into the case less accurate?

gmerkt · Jun 3, 2024

Interesting test:

Crooked-Seated Bullets and Accuracy - American Handgunner

How important is it to seat the bullet perfectly strait in the case? What if the bullet is seated crooked? Read the full article...

americanhandgunner.com

arakboss · Jun 3, 2024

I have wondered that myself. I believe one company makes a special seating die to prevent that from happening.

dangerranger60 · Jun 3, 2024

I think rifle ammo will make a much greater difference. Speed and distance have mor time to affect the accuracy. On target ammo I do check run out.
I also adjust dies so that the expander ball only just drops inside the belled case neck. that way when it is pulled back up through, the neck is held in position by the resizing die. This has dropped my average runout even using Lee dies. DR

gmerkt · Jun 4, 2024

arakboss said:
I believe one company makes a special seating die to prevent that from happening.

Yes, the guy who wrote that article had a Redding Competition die set that he used as part of his testing. According to his results, the Comp die prepared ammo came out with the largest groups! Of course, that was based only on his set of tests. But he fired a lot of rounds, used a Ransom Rest, etc.

Hornady dies have a feature that keeps the bullet some in line during the seating process. There are others.

I've got a Lyman M die for 9mm and the author is right, using it eliminates the infamous 9mm case bulge. When I was loading cast bullets in 8mm Mauser, I had an M die for that too and it worked well.

I don't particularly like Lyman equipment (for a number of reasons) but I like the M die. I've also got a Lyman Turbo Tumbler, but there are many others like it with different brand names on them, all made in the same place. So Lyman can't really be credited with making a tumbler that lasts for 40 years.

JustShoot · Jun 5, 2024

Concentric ..
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red442joe · Jun 5, 2024

"Strait"?
I don't think I know what he means...
Mebbe, mebbe not.

Joe

osprey · Jun 5, 2024

In precision rifle ammo I find that I see little or no difference out to about .007- 008" of runout. Beyond that I have noticed a slight loss of precision. I strive for .005" or less. In pistol ammo I would say it is waste of time and money worrying about it for the intended distances and uses.