Elkins45
Active Member
I tried to load for my new 458 SOCOM upper this week using the Lee 500 grain flat point. What I discovered is that I can’t set the die down far enough to turn in the mouth flare because the seater stem won’t back out far enough to seat the bullet. Even with the seater adjustment barely hanging on to the top thread it wanted to seat the bullet way too deep. I ended up screwing the die body way out of the press to seat the bullets, then removing the seater stem and screwing it back down to remove the crimp.
I figure I have two options: either buy a factory crimp die or drastically trim and then reshape the seater stem. I do find this very curious because I wasn’t seating the bullet particularly long. It still fit into a standard GI aluminum magazine. Has anyone else experienced this? Maybe they put the wrong seater stem into my particular set of dies?
I figure I have two options: either buy a factory crimp die or drastically trim and then reshape the seater stem. I do find this very curious because I wasn’t seating the bullet particularly long. It still fit into a standard GI aluminum magazine. Has anyone else experienced this? Maybe they put the wrong seater stem into my particular set of dies?