I will be getting some of these from raineer or barry's for my 357 soon. I see that these don't have a crimp groove and I believe my Lee 4 die set comes with a roll crimper. Do I buy a seperate taper crimp die or does the seating die crimp. I don't have my press and dies yet as there in the mail now. Do you guys just reload them to cast specs, I've heard of some loading these to close to jacket velocities. Thanx all for your knowledge and help.

i've been using them for quite awhile now. you can load them right up to jacketed specs. DO NOT use a roll crimp. the crimp can cut through the plating. use only a tapered crimp, if any at all.

I use the Rainier 185 gr. plated flat point in my everyday .45ACP load over 4.9gr. of Clays and an F-150 primer. This is Rainier's recommended load for this powder, and it works quite well for me. It is adequately powerful to reliably cycle most (but not all) stock-springed 45's, and in my gun shoots better than I do.

At first, accuracy was lacking; the cause proved to be bullets cocked in the cases. The Rainier bullets are very soft swaged lead and the square-nosed punch in the RCBS seater would not straighten them when pressing them home.

A Hornady straight-line seater modified with a spring above the sliding sleeve solved the problem. I taper-crimp two flats deep after contact with the RCBS seater in a separate operation.

My advice would be to follow the published data for these bullets; due to the very soft core and thin jacket they are said to obturate more thoroughly (along the lines of lead bullets) than jacketed bullets and therefore require slightly less powder for weight than jacketed, due to the lower gas leakage.

Good Shooting!

BV