Luke E.

For those that don't know or have only used Lee's factory crimp die for rifle applications (I was part of the latter until not to long ago) the Lee Factory crimp dies for straight wall pistol calibers are different that their bottleneck counterparts. The pistol dies are actually a combination die in that they full length sized as well as crimp. My point is that since this is the last step in loading, the ammo, it should always be within SAAMI specs so long as you don't get an out of spec over sized die somehow. These things work great, especially with cast lead bullets. My mold drops at the perfect size therefor there is no need to size the bullets and can load them as cast. The only "problem" is that from time to time it will drop one bigger than the rest and that's where the carbide factory crimp die comes in handy because if the bullet happens to be a little to large and stretches the case out enough that it wouldn't chamber, the die actually sizes/swages the bullet in the case and every round is the exact same diameter. Do you have a buddy or a forum member close by that is set up to load .45? if so if might be worth loading some with their equipment so that you can rule out equipment issues. I'd offer but I doubt you'd wanna make that drive.