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All, I am very new to reloading. I just bought a bunch of equipment from a very helpful fellow at Cabela's in Fort Worth. First off, if anyone on here has reloading questions in the Fort Worth area, I highly recommend talking to Marty at Cabelas.

Anyway, I have all my stuff setup, I've read all the manuals, and I successfully decapped / resized all my cases. I'm now at the point I want to start expanding them (we're talking 9mm). My question though is that I'm unclear as to how much expansion I need. I think i have it set right, but i'm not quite sure how to tell. If anyone can provide me any insight into this, then please do. Thanks again!

on my setup (Lee Turret), the 2nd die does the case mouth expansion and powder charge. my dies came with setup instructions, and I started there. I found that I was getting cases where, when seating the bullet, the bullet edge would hang on the case mouth and cause the case to have a ripple or buckle in it. it was happening fairly infrequently. ...maybe 3 out of 100. I decided to adjust the case expansion down (more expansion). this did the trick. all but eliminated the case ripple on bullet seat.

so in my experience, that's what happens with too little expansion. since I started there, then bumped up to the sweet-spot, I can't answer what happens if you have too much.

best of luck with the reloading! I just got dies and a new turret to start reloading .40's now.

You can actually contact Marty here. He is just "marty".

You will get lots of answers here.
1st - You picked an excellent instructor to help you set up your reloading bench. Marty is 1st clas at loading & an all round great guy.
Your book probably says to ex the case jsut enough to accept the bullet.
I like to expand it more than that. Enough for the bullet set down in the case easily. Just right for me is about 3/32" to 1/8" of the bullet in the case.
Too little expansion & you crush the case.
Too much & they wear out & split too quickly.
If I err it will be on the too much end. Everyone is different.

The amount you expand the case mouth is also dependant on what type of bullet you are loading. If you are loading lead bullets (unlikely since you said 9mm) it is advisable to open the mouth a little more so you don't shave lead when seating the bullet. I have my expansion die set as described by LT, you can easily feed the bullet into mouth of case (but it won't drop to bottom of case when you let go of it)

Yes sir, & great minds think alike.

LT and friends said it better than I could

Marty wrote: LT and friends said it better than I could

You mean this part.
1st - You picked an excellent instructor to help you set up your reloading bench. Marty is 1st clas at loading & an all round great guy.

or one of the other parts.

How you doin my friend.

Doing well LT . I hope all is well with you. Linda made me get on to see this thread, y'all had the problem solved before I got booted up!!!

We are saving the hard ones for you.

Thanks all! And thanks again Marty for all the help at the store. I had a softball game last night that ran late so I didn't get to do any reloading, but I plan to make up for that tonight. I'll let you all know how it goes. I plan to load about 50 cases completely, and then test fire those at the range to see how they do. Once I get a feel for what I'm doing and ensure that things are going well, I'll make some more.

All, I took a pic of two cases side-by-side for comparison. The one on the left has been expanded. Do you guys think this is enough, too much, or not enough? I took one with the bullet sitting in it but it didn't focus properly so I'll have to redo that tonight.

By the pic I would say a little more.
Put the bullet in & if it goes in 1/8" tht is good.

You're only expanding enough to allow the base of the bullet to start.

Any more needlessly overworks the brass at the case mouth.

So, if the bullet starts, then yes, it's enough.