Hello guys,
As I already said, im a total noob to reloading, I just bought my first kit and pretty much everything I need to reload. I have read a lot on the subject but never done any before. I bought a LEE auto index deluxe version 4 hole turret press with lee carbide 3 dies ... Now I have a huge problem, I noticed that I really gotta take my time to try to place each bullet on the shell VERY PERFECTLY aligned straight before pushing it in the seating die otherwise it gets misaligned and you can see clearly that its not perfectly straight but has a little angle. I guess this is not normal? I worked for 2 hrs to make 10 bullets that are straight, cuz I had to re-do every one of them at least 4-5 times cuz no matter how perfectly I try to align the bullet it still has a little angle in it when finished, MAYBE 1 out of 3 times it seems perfectly straight. Is it me not being experienced or it isnt supposed to be like this? I checked the seating die and everything seems good to me, it is not screwed cross thread or something to my eye it seems straight, only thing is I believe the shell moves just a tad when pressure gets applied on the bullet (cuz when you put the shell in that adapter it is not very solid, its kinda loose I don’t know if its normal .. ) and I believe it moves the shell just a tad and the bullet gets moved just a little to get out of perfect position where I placed it and it makes it go in misaligned.
I thought the die was supposed to be seating the bullet perfectly itself without you doing much, right now I spend 20 seconds to deprime it, prime, resize, put in the powder and then I spend 20 mins trying to put the bullet on top of it. Something seems awfully wrong.
I just did some testing yesterday and I found one part of the problem I believe. That seating die, in the instructions it said to screw it all the way down until it touches the shell and then unscrew 3 full tours and that’s it .. I have tried it, but thing is the bullet finished in the middle of shell way too deep I couldn’t even pull it out, so I unscrew it at least 4 more turns (7-8 total turns) to adjust it to the distance the bullet is supposed to be sitting .. Only today I thought about it and said to myself maybe that’s why the bullet wont go in well aligned maybe the shell needs to go inside of seating die even deeper, makes sense to me .. I already unscrewed once that cap on the top of the seating die but couldn’t understand what was the point of it because there was nothing inside of the die ... so today I completely removed the die from its location and took a close look at it and unscrewed again that cap on the top of it and just then I understood that it might be an adjustment how deep the brass goes in and then I thought maybe that’s the one I need to adjust ... heres a picture I took just to clarify it
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g1...SAM_2285PS.jpg ... so I decide to screw the die completely back in and then out 3 full turns like they recommend and then I adjusted that cap on top so that I get the good measurements of how deep the bullet goes in.... Is that what Im supposed to adjust and is this the right way to do it??? After I did this I loaded about 10 more bullets and saw very quickly that it is MUCH better than before, but still not perfect ... Some bullets are perfectly straight, maybe 3 or 4 out of 10 but the rest still have little misalignment and when I roll them on a flat surface you can clearly see that theyre not perfectly straight. Then I did some more testing to try to understand what is happening because no matter how perfectly I try to put the bullet on the shell with my fingers as soon as the bullet leaves the seating die its not aligned properly. I noticed that when the bullet enters the seating die, you can clearly see that its not perfectly aligned there either so it brings me to the conclusion that there might be a problem with either the die or the press being misaligned or the adapter holding my shell. I took some photos to show you: if you look closely at this one you see that its not entering the die well aligned:
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g1...SAM_2293PS.jpg ... and heres a zoomed picture where u can see even better
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g1...AM_2293PS2.jpg .... and no its not the angle from which I took the picture cuz this is exactly what I see with my eyes no matter from what angle Im looking I clearly see its not aligned properly. Do you guys think this might be the cause of the problem??? I also took a picture of the bullet that completely enters the seating die, is this how deep its supposed to get inside?
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g1...SAM_2296PS.jpg .... Should I maybe try to lower the seating die even lower so that it covers the whole shell and I just unscrew the cap of the die???
Sorry for the very long text, I hope you guys can help me.
Thank you very much.