Posted by denny mcdaniels on May 07, 2025 in News
Our past newsletters have tried to give you industry updates to keep you informed and related stories. With this newsletter, we are unveiling a new approach to the Duck Creek news. Our goal is to provide expertise on specific topics from notable individuals in the industry. Please let us know about other topics that may be of interest.
For this newsletter release, I interviewed Lonnie Cribb of Superior Ammunition, which has been producing custom loading since 1984. I wanted to know the importance of crimping bullets, and to expand upon a topic I recently posted in the News pages at Duck Creek (CLICK HERE TO READ). I concluded the interview with a treasure chest full of notes and ideas for future newsletters. Below is the summary Mr. Cribb shared on bullet crimps.
Superior Ammunition applies a crimp to:
On all cartridges .375 and larger.Anything intended for rifles with a tubular magazine or will be fired in an AR Platform.
Calibers less than .375 generally are not crimped unless there is considerable bore volume concerning the bullet. For example, 110-grain bullets loaded in a 308 Winchester. By applying a crimp, the goal is to hold the bullet in the case a little longer so several types of energy can develop.
- Two of the apparent forms of energy are Expansion and Heat.
- Compression Energy is a complicated but interesting principle where expanding gas momentarily compresses the remaining grains of powder making the substance denser, this leads to increased pressure which in turn improves the standard deviation. As you can see, this leads to another chapter that hopefully can be dealt with at a later time.
A more common method to hold a bullet in a case is plain old neck tension, Superior Ammunition likes this value to be .002-.004. Neck tension is naturally created when brass is sized, and the neck is compressed to a slightly smaller diameter.
· Measured by comparing the neck diameter of sized brass versus the diameter of a loaded round.
· In this example, the diameter of the neck from a sized case is .3155 inches. The diameter of the neck is .3175 on a loaded case, the difference is .002 inches so neck tension can be stated as .002.
Lonnie repeatedly stated that all of the above information is true, based on YOUR current application which may be a perfect fit at your reloading bench but not so much for the next guy. Firearms and shooters are unique individuals and, therefore what produces great results for one may be less than great for the next guy.
Price Stability
From my research, and talking to suppliers and manufacturers, the large increases we experienced over the last four years should be over – unless a tariff war on imports kicks into high gear. The simple fact is that the US ammunition factories greatly rely on imports to obtain raw materials. This is not true across the board but there are some exceptions. Either way, if that happens, higher prices will result in the future.
At the same time, prices are not expected to lower to pre-2020 levels.
