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Houston1944 wrote:... The bullet should not be pulled from the case with a single light tap on any surface. Your statement leads me to believe you are not getting enough case tension to hold the bullet in place. ....I would recommend you load a dummy round and then push the bullet into a wood or other hard surface to see if you can push it back into the case by using your thumb pressure on the primer end of the case. If your are able to push the bullet into the case by hand then you need to check your die settings to make sure you are resizing the case correctly.

Good advice. I think the expander is going too deep now (vs not at all earlier). I'll fine tune it, but it's clear that I'm in the right "range" now :-)

Aha! I'm glad you guys followed through on my other comment :) So it turned out that on the Lee, it's the Powder-thru Expander die, and it wasn't belling at all based on the depth I had originally set.

I made some adjustments and not only did that address the bullet seating issue, but the bullet puller now works with a single light tap on my carpeted floor (which has a concrete foundation). I will also avoid any future tapping on the bathroom tile...wouldn't want to make the missus mad :)

Thanks for all for your perseverance in this!

Ah, got it working...apparently, this bullet puller prefers bathroom tile and about 4 hard strikes

Thanks for the feedback, but yeah, I tried it on concrete too. I'm just wondering if things are just smashed in there too tight (based on the fact that the bullet doesn't really "pre-seat" prior to bullet seating.

I _finally_ got my first round loaded correctly (ok, haven't fired it yet).

I have a Lee Classic Turret with Lee Carbide dies. I'm loading .40 S&W with 4.7gr of TiteGroup (yes, I know, not really the best "starter powder") and 155gr FMJ Rainier bullets.

The first thing I noticed is that the resizing step doesn't widen the case mouth as much as I expected. When I put the bullet on top for seating, it doesn't sit in the mouth, but must be carefully balanced. Unfortunately, my first three attempts seated the bullet below the min OAL, 1.125 (the first one, in fact, seated very deeply).

I tried using my bullet puller (http://www.quineticscorp.com/bullet-puller.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;) with absolutely no luck. I tried several surfaces and several ways of holding it.

Any ideas on what I might be doing wrong?