I have noticed that my 44 loaded ammunition all have a "bulge" in the brass where the bullet was loaded. It is quite noticable. It happens with lead and jacketed bullets. The expander die diameter seems too small measuring .425". When you load a .431 or .430 bullet you get a bulge in the brass. The mouth belling function works just fine. You can even push a resized case over the expander plug by hand pressure. The loaded bullets fit OK in the chamber of my 44 handguns. Is this bulge normal or is it something to be concerned about?

As long as your reloads chamber properly, the bulge is normal in the sense that the bullet is being gripped firmly by the case. This is what you want in revolver ammunition since the roll crimp itself will not hold the bullet under recoil. I have an RCBS carbide die set for .44 Special/Magnum and all of my reloads have that "hourglass" appearance too but everything chambers and shoots just fine. I suppose you could just "neck size" your cases to improve the cosmetics. The rest of the case would be left expanded so the bulge would be less noticeable. Eventually though, you will still have to full length size the cases when the reloads will no longer chamber so why even bother? Hope this alleviates some of your concern.

Also would add that most expanders have a narrowed lead that serves to start the case onto the expander and to align it before it reaches the belling portion of the expander. It is on purpose that the resized case fits easily over that lead portion because you don't want to expand the brass and reduce that friction grip on the bullet that Marshal mentioned. The only expansion should be the belling of the casemouth itself.

The one exception to this is when you get a Lyman type M or a Redding pistol expander die. These do open the brass diameter for a short distance below the bell, for the purpose of helping the bullet go in straight when the seater starts to push it down. Below is an image that exaggerates the two expansion styles. You can also see from the width of the bullet, why the bulge occurs when the bullet seating and crimping is completed.

http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/1143/bulletseatingflaresandsbq5.gif

I don't like to "expand" a case with a cast bullet, it is likely to end with the case reducing the diameter of the bullet and that will harm accuracy. Expanders should usually be bullet diameter or a bit less, say .001" less than the bullets at a maximum, because the naturaly springyness of brass will have it shrinking about .001" in most cases. That will produce enough grip to hold the bullets and the case won't reduce/damage the bullet either.

My Lyman M die expanders are bullet diameter on the main portion.

Pistol die expanders don't offer you much choice. They are set up to let the brass grip the bullet firmly, and you would have to find a way to add metal to them to change that situation. That said, I've never noticed cast bullet diameter being substantially decreased by case brass run through commercial die sets? Most common cast bullet alloys are hard enough to spring back out a half thousandth to a thousandth after passing through even a hard steel sizer die. It's the reason you can't get valid slug measurements off an alloy cast bullet, but have to use something near pure lead.

Now, could the Lee Factory Crimp Die shrink a cast bullet in a thick-walled case too much for a gun with a generous bore? Yes, I sure think that could happen.

I don't like to "expand" a case with a cast bullet, it is likely to end with the case reducing the diameter of the bullet and that will harm accuracy. Expanders should usually be bullet diameter or a bit less, say .001" less than the bullets at a maximum, because the naturaly springyness of brass will have it shrinking about .001" in most cases. That will produce enough grip to hold the bullets and the case won't reduce/damage the bullet either.

My Lyman M die expanders are bullet diameter on the main portion.

Not sure I agree.

First, with hard-recoiling handguns, you want / need all the case neck tension you can get. While there will be some springback on the brass, you can't assume it will always be 0.001." It is going to vary with the particular batch, and then more as the cases are worked with multiple firings, maybe annealings too. The simplest thing to do is to have the expander well under bullet diameter, and know that you'll get maximum neck tension in all instances.

Second, with cast bullets, if chamber pressure and bullet hardness won't allow the base to obturate and seal the chamber, all is lost anyway, it seems. Granted sometimes you get the chamber mouth / forcing cone / bore diameter and bullet to match exactly, but it's easier to start out with the (cast) bullet as large as possible, with the bullet at the correct hardness (for the load) to make sure that it will be bumped up to fill the available space.

With gas checked bullets I don't worry about the base being eroded or squeezed down as it goes into the case.

I do like the Lyman M dies but find in my measurements that the minor diameter portion of them is about 0.002" below nominal bullet diameter for the caliber. There will be some variance, of course, and my small sample may vary from yours.

For cast bullets about the only issue I have is sometimes the major diameter isn't quite what you'd want for cast bullets that are over jackedted specs, say 0.432" bullets in a .44 mag Ruger. In that case some additional flare, or a custom expander button, is a good thing. But if anything on the custom expanders that I have made, the minor diameter is even less than the factory offering for jacketed bullets.

Also, for long heavy bullets, the M expander may not go as far into the case as you think. The bullet base is probably hitting non-expanded neck anyway despite what the rest of the expander reads.

Now, granted, for single-shot use, or special competition, there is nothing wrong with experimenting with neck tension to see what will give the ultimate in accuracy. But for practical use (ie. the hunting fields), I would recommend as much neck tension as possible.

Mike, I agree with your reasoned response. I know my few M dies are not a statistically significant sample and I may be wrong about the average M expander diameter. I have "M" type expanders for all my calibers but about half are home made on my shop lathe, I usually turn them to a thousant less than bullet diameter and they work quite well for me.

You are absolutely correct about the need for obturation. Years ago, when I was young and foolish as opposed to old and dumb, I shot a lot at an abandoned saw mill site into the saw dust pile. By digging out my hot loaded .357 and .44 mag SWC bullets I found that all but the hardest alloys would become a truncated cone, almost wad-cutter shaped! I KNOW they obtruated so that seems to be less of a real world problem than is frequently thought, as least for case bullets.

I never pulled any bullet to see if the case had actually sized them down but I NEVER had any to pull under recoil. Of course a nice roll crimp resisted that as well as needed it seemed.

I got the caution about the potential for lead bullet reduction in overly tight cases from NRA/Rifleman cast bullet articles back in the 60s, maybe they overstated the case but...??

I was having trouble believing something as thin as brass case necks would exert enough stress on the bullet to narrow it measurably. There is also that the whole Tumble Lube design concept depends on those little tiny grooves remaining essentially uncorrupted. If they were, it wouldn't fly so well. I went ahead and measured a few bullets and the walls of the cases they were going into, and in each case the expanded diameter reflected the bullet diameter + 2x the mouth wall, to the nearest couple of ten thousandths (hard to tell beyond that because the bullets and case walls combine to have more non-uniformity than that, so I have to use markers to try to hit specific locations inside the case mouth with the right part of the bullet). In any case, I think if we calculate the stress needed to induce the strain of the measured case mouth expansion, we'll find it can't do much to something with the Brinell hardness of most cast bullets. Possibly something to pure lead? If I get time, I run those numbers.

When I first got my Dillon Square Deal about 20 years ago, I didn't like that the radiused flare of the expander/operating/drop tube. It allowed bullets to tip and wind up bulging the case asymmetrically. I, too, went to the lathe with a piece of drill rod and made my own. It seems to me I also measured about 0.002" under bullet size on my Lyman M dies then, but that I wound up using a shade less. Maybe 0.0015" under? I'd have to open it up to see for sure? At the time, Dillon told me they used to cut them that way as a customer option, but had stopped. The fellow I was talking to didn't know why; only that it was so?