To crimp or not to crimp, that is the question.

[243LPR]

What did I miss?

[Apache]

A pissin contest.....and some discipline applied to those that did wrong.

[thermaler]

Kinda getting away from the thread but not too much. Any of you guys remember the hurah that the honcho at Speer Bullets and the honcho at Lee Dies got in years ago? Seems Lee did some "research" about crimping and came up with an add that said crimping improved accuracy....even on bullets that did not have a crimp ring. Since Lee just happened to be pushing their die sets that included their crimping die (at extra cost of course) they spent lot's of advertising money to "prove" their point. Speer took exception and said that crimping bullets without a crimp ring did not improve accuracy and deformed the bullet. Well it finally got out of hand and Lee put in print that Speer bullets were bad and no one should buy them. Speer countered with Lee dies were junk and no one should buy them. Lessons learned? You can be right in the wrong way and/or wrong in the right way.

It appears that some of the 6.8 guys are not crimping, don't know if that's a risky thing or not. correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't crimping increase the tension of the grip of the neck on the bullet, and therefore changes the case pressure build-up and bullet release characteristics? I don't generally notice crimp/non-crimp info on load tables.

[6mmBR_Shooter]

I never crimped for the 308s in my Rock River LAR-8. I had the 16" mid-length, and never had an issue with setback.

Like it was somewhat mentioned before, you can take a dummy round with no powder or primer, and cycle it hard, repeatedly in the action. If you take before and after measurements of the OAL, you would be able to see if your tension is more than likely enough to keep the bullet in place.

[thermaler]

I never crimped for the 308s in my Rock River LAR-8. I had the 16" mid-length, and never had an issue with setback.

Like it was somewhat mentioned before, you can take a dummy round with no powder or primer, and cycle it hard, repeatedly in the action. If you take before and after measurements of the OAL, you would be able to see if your tension is more than likely enough to keep the bullet in place.

I get the logic of that--but it still is leaving out the pressure issue from fire/recoil, which in my mind is a bit of an unknown if you're not doing a live-fire.