I have read a number of articles discussing the advantages and disadvantages of crimping the bullet in the case. In fact, there is a very good article in the February issue of Petersen’s RIFLE SHOOTER magazine, by Mr. Wayne van Zwoll discussing this very subject.

He did not go as far as doing any shooting tests. And as I have a number of factory crimp dies from LEE – who have always implied that crimped ammo would out shoot the non-crimped variety – I thought of doing a test of my own.

The test would involve three different rifles, in three different calibers.

All cases were match prepped and sorted to within 0.5 of a grain, all bullets were molly coated.

I loaded 50 identical rounds for each rifle, 25 of which were crimped and 25 were left without crimps. I tried to put a reasonably heavy crimp on, although none of the bullets had a crimp groove. I fired all of the them as 5 shot groups, over an OEHLER Model 43 PBL.

223 REMINGTON

Well, when I went into this project, I must admit that I was a bit skeptical about finding any improvements. Now if we look at the groups, we find that the crimped ammo shot approximately 10% better. Also, the standard deviation seems to be lower with the crimped ammo. I think this needs looking into further.