Cheap gas check seater

[Josh]

Very simple (and cheap) way to seat gas checks perfect every time

I have experimented on how to seat gas checks to where they are straight, square, and fully seated without the need for a lubesizer.

Just take an old push through seater and place the seating stem inside of it with a little spare or contaminated lube. Screw it into your reloading press. Then use a second seater stem in the shell holder.



Now sit a bullet nose down on the seater stem as shown and ram the press home... GENTLY!!!!!!



This seats the gas check perfectly square and allows you to feel it bottom out.

Now for bullets without a meplat. I use a standard shell holder and place the appropriate top punch in the hole in the center, some shell holders need enlarged by about .002.



Seat the bullet in the top punch and gently ram home, this will not damage the bullet nose and self centers easily.



I hope this helps!

 

[358156hp]

I never thought of that. Excellent!

 

[Josh]

If you do not have 2 sizer dies you could always use a flat lyman top punch in a shell holder for bullets with a meplat. That would work just as well as another ram.

Cheap and easy, qualities I only like in cars and casting...

 

[Ian]

Now THAT's clever, I never thought of it either, especially the part about using a shell holder to support a nose punch. What I've been doing is using an electrical box knock-out disc across the top of my H die in my Lyman luber/sizers and using either a flat or formed nose punch, but it's difficult to see well enough to get the bullet straight. Your idea I think is better, I'll be trying that out soon. THANKS!

 

[Jared]

I normally use the lyman seater on my 450 but that is a great idea for the calibers I size on the star or with Lee dies.

 

[freebullet]

I gave this a shot and it works dandy.