What brand of TC die for 45 ACP .463 crimp?

I have always crimped at .469. Went to try .463, and my old Bonanza TC die became a bullet swager. It obviously has too narrow of taper angle for .463.

I have RCBS, Lee, and Hornady, they're all good, Lee being least expensive.

I have used Dillon and C-H dies without any problems crimping to 0.463. What is the diameter of the top driving band just below where you are crimping and of the lowest portion of the bottom driving band.

When I crimped to .463 the top driving band was .469 and the bottom was .472. Most of my cases (mixed) have have a .010 wall. The Bonanza die was just meant to take out the bell.
I have seem some ammo that looks like the taper is so short and steep it almost looks like a truncated roll crimp. I kind of like that concept in theory.

I have a RCBS taper crimp die and crimp down to .464-.465 with no problem.

Dillon is good and easy to clean.

Brent375hh wrote:When I crimped to .463 the top driving band was .469 and the bottom was .472. Most of my cases (mixed) have have a .010 wall. The Bonanza die was just meant to take out the bell.
I have seem some ammo that looks like the taper is so short and steep it almost looks like a truncated roll crimp. I kind of like that concept in theory.

Assuming that your bullets are sized to .452 and your wall thickness is .010 we would expect that the diameter of the cartridge is .472 (bullet diameter plus twice the wall thickness). Which it is over the lower driving band. So no problems there and you are about .002 over the groove diameter so you will have a good seal at the rear of the bullet where it counts. You have about .003 swaging at the front driving band which is only about .001 under the groove diameter. The portion of the bullet in front of the crimp will still be at .452 inches. You have a good seal at both the front of the bullet and the rear. 

FWIW -- If you have a copy of Cast Bullets by Col. Harrison flip over to page 32 where they are talking about roll and taper crimping. Note that this is a reprint of Dinan's article in the August 1961 American Rifleman. They were roll crimping and taper crimping to .460 inches. Their accuracy tests using bullets from two different molds, having different as-cast diameters, were 2.9 and 2.7 inches for a composite of 3 10 shot groups at 50 yards.

I think Dillon is the best for .463. I have Lee, RCBS and Hornady. The Dillon is the easiest to use by far because it has the longest, most gradual taper. Making it the smoothest to operate and easiest to see. The long taper also makes case length even less important.

Len

Thanks for all the suggestions. I took the cheaper alternative, and bought the Lee. It appears to crimp only the last .045-.060 of the case mouth, which is what I wanted as opposed to such a gradual taper that was applied way too far down.

I machine rest tested ammo crimped down to .463" with my Dillon dies. I know some very talented people here who use that. My groups (if you can call them that) were extremely disappointing. I know that one very top pistolsmith in days gone by, John Giles, as well as, some current top pistolsmiths, recommend the tight crimp. I figured that they probably used Star reloaders and dies. Anyway, if it works for you, great. It didn't work for me.