Neck Expanding Straight Wall Cases

[Bullseye]

I only load jacketed bullets in my straight wall pistol cases.  I was reading in a Speer manual tonight and it led me to believe that the case mouth only needs to be expanded if loading cast bullets.

I have always expanded the case mouths when reloading.  So my question is, do you folks expand the case mouth if you are reloading jacketed bullets.

Thanks for the info!!!

[KN]

You bet, If you dont you can't get any flare for starting the bullet. And that makes things difficult.  KN

[John Traveler]

Hey Bullseye!

Expanding the case mouth after resizing is done on straight-wall cases for the same reasons it's done on the bottleneck cases.  It makes the case mouth MORE UNIFORM in diameter to receive the bullet.

Without that case-mouth expanding step, different brands/batches/lots of cases with differing wall thicknesses would give non-uniform case neck tension.  All of this would be bad on ballistic uniformity, and therefore, on accuracy.

Resizing cases intentionally makes the case mouth/neck smaller than necessary for seating a bullet.  Expanding opens it back up to make bullet seating more uniform.

Back when I was young, foolish, and lazy, I played around with loading .38/.357 revolver cases without the neck sizing and expanding steps.  WOW!  I thought, this makes relaoding a LOT faster!

YEP, you can guess the end results:  poor ignition, bloopers, bullets stuck in bore, spilled powder, and really crummy accuracy.

That neck expanding step is in there for good reasons!  Use it!

[ricciardelli]

Yup...

[Bullseye]

Thanks all.  I will keep expanding them cases just like I have for years and forget about getting lazy.