Just got some Hawk 400 grains for my 404 Jeffery. These don't have a cannelure. I don't use a cannelure on Hawks for my 450/400 double. I am now using a Lee Factory Crimp Die, so I'm not sure if I need to these bullets?
My reloads are for historical 404 Jeffery velocities.
I would appreciate y'all's thoughts.

Rusty,

Not sure this is much help, but every time I have forgotten to change the die setting on my 458 dies, and attempted to seat a smooth sided bullet with the die set to crimp, it has wrinkled the brass.

Joe

Buy a Corbin cannelure tool! Its not that expensive and will increase ytour options forever!-Rob

IMHO with Lee FCD you don't need to worry about cannelures & the slight inwards turn given to the case neck does no harm to feeding.
Steve

No need to crimp at those velocities.

Crimping is done to keep the bullet from moving in the case; either pulling out under recoil or getting shoved back farther into the case than desired.
If you have good case neck tension on the bullet, then the recoil of your rifle isn't going to move the bullet even without a crimp. To test this, fully load your rifle, then fire all but one cartridge. Then load more on top of that cartridge and again fire all but that same cartridge. Then measure the OAL and see if the bullet is moving. If it isn't; you don't have to worry. If it moved into the cartridge, this is dangerous as can greatly raise the pressure generated by the powder (pressure is a result of x amount of hot gases from burning powder per y amount of volume - decrease y and the pressure goes up). If the bullet is coming out, as long as it still feeds into the chamber smoothly it won't be a problem. Remember you gave that last shell twice the number of recoil impulses as it will see in the field, so you do have some margin. You could gain more confidence by repeating the whole process four or five times and seeing that none of the bullets moved, or moved out very little, in the cartridge; and also by increasing the number of recoil impulses each tested cartridge sees (i.e. reload the rifle three or four times instead of just twice).

Thank you all for your input!