My first mistake...do I need to pull and redo?

[BruinGuy]

Yesterday I spent hours prepping and priming brass. I had everything I needed to make up a little batch of 40 7.62x54r. It was all very exciting.

I completely forgot that my resizing die was not correct for the bullet I am using. I have the Lee Deluxe set, and I'm using .311 Speer bullets. I was obsessively careful about my powder charge, measuring each one on the scale since my thrower is new (as am I to reloading). I got my bullet seating perfectly matched to Speer's recommendation for OAL.

The worst part is, I noticed the ever so slight bulge in the neck where the bullet was seated, but in my excitement of seeing finished rounds coming off the line, it didn't register.

The problem of course is that the Lee die has a .308 neck sizer. I even have a set of .303 Enfield dies from which I could take the pin and put it in the die, but I didn't.

The question then is, are these safe to shoot, or do I need to pull them all, run them through the resizing die for .311, and reload them now? Will the tighter bullet cause unsafe pressure, or signicantly reduce the life of the brass? What about the primers if I do need to resize the neck?

I loaded just over the minimum charge (41 gr. of Varget) using Federal primers under the .311 spire point bullet.

[mrkubota]

54r headspaces on the case rim, so the slight buldging shouldn't be an issue. (unless it's actually combined with something like over seating/crimping too)

[mark501w]

How was the case length ?

[BruinGuy]

How was the case length ?

I trimmed all the cases after resizing to 2.105, and seated the bullets for an overall length of 2.90 (based on Speer's recommendation for the particular bullet).

I didn't use the crimp die, since these are for my Mosin and I didn't think it necessary.

I did pull one, just to try it out, and two good whacks got it out. I don't think that's necessarily a good indicator of how tight they are in the necks, though?

[CSACANNONEER]

Sounds OK to me. If you want me to look at them, shoot me a PM and I'll swing by either later today or tomorrow afternoon.

[BruinGuy]

Thanks for the offer, CSA. Maybe pictures will help? The one on the left is in Winchester brass, the one on the right in PPU. It's a very slight bulge, but I think it can be seen in the pictures?

[Fyathyrio]

The one on the left looks like it's leaning slightly, is the primer seated fully?

[FLIGHT762]

Your main issue with the bulged neck is going to be if the cases with the neck bulge will chamber easily in your rifle. If they easily chamber they will be fine to shoot as long as you didn't load them with a maximum load. If they don't chamber, then you will have to break them down.

Next time remember to use the proper sizing button.

['ol shooter]

They look like they will do all right. Try this next time, when you seat the bullet, start the bullet in a little, then back off, then continue. It helps the bullet go in straighter for me.

[Divernhunter]

If they chamber shoot them. You do not need to crimp them and they will shoot just fine.
If you need to pull and resize any rifle brass just back the decap stem up into the die so that it does not punch out the primers and you are good. That way it still sizes the neck as you lower the case. Just be sure to reset the depriming stem before resizing fired brass so that the spent primer is removed.

[BruinGuy]

The one on the left looks like it's leaning slightly, is the primer seated fully?

Yes, it's flush. I don't feel any lip and I checked it against my calipers (the most uniform flat surface I could think of) and they're uniformly flat across it ( i dragged the caliper gently across it to feel for any lip or hangup). However, the PPU easily seated below flush, while with the Winchester cases it took a lot of effort to get them flush. On the first Win case, I couldn't get the primer to seat, so I de-capped it, and swaged all of the pockets. That helped them go in flush without too much extra effort, but they wouldn't seat anywhere near as deeply as the PPU.

I was priming on the press, since I don't have the shell holder for my auto prime for x54r. I couldn't get them any deeper, and I didn't want to try to jam them in further - i was already exerting a fair bit of force to get them in. Since they're for a bolt-action, I'm not worried about slam fire. Should I be concerned about pierced primers?

[spamsucker]

Looks like a non-issue to me. It would be problematic with .311 expander ball and .308 bullets since there would be less than zero neck tension but you're ok.. You press fitted (swaged) your projectiles into the case which is not uncommon. You came out on the right side, luckily. I don't think it'll help or hurt anything.

[Bhobbs]

I'm not sure if the higher neck tension will cause pressure issues or not but shoot one and check it for pressure signs. If there isn't any, shoot the rest and see how they do.

[BruinGuy]

I'm going to give them a go - I'll check for pressure signs with each one. Thanks for all of the advice. I won't make the same mistake twice...I'll surely make more though!

[BruinGuy]

Interesting turn of events...

The PPU cases fired fine. Not the most accurate load, but no problems and no signs of over pressure.

The Winchester loaded cases, on the other hand, did not get fired. I could not close the bolt on any of them. I'm going to pull the bullets and try resizing them again. If that doesn't work then it's to the scrap heap I guess. At least this time I'll have the neck correctly sized.