If they chamber, I wouldn't fool with that crimp.

Basic break down,

The Win HS hulls in 12 are shorter than the older CF hulls, so keep that in mind from the start. So if you have the machine set up for STS hulls, you will need to readjust the machine for the shorter HS hulls if that is what your going to reload.

So basic break down, when inserting the wad, adjust the wad ram so it will not compress the wad during insertion, Hence we only want the wad to be pushed into the hull to kiss the top of power, but not compress the wad at this time,

Now lets touch on fill of the hull, and that is the power amount, the wad you are using, and the amount of shot, should have the top of shot line to the bottom of the fold line inside the hulls, and again, without the wad compressed.  Really, about 60% of the shot loading data has the hull fill amount wrong for the given hull and it takes some time to find the perfect combo of power type, wad type, and shot load for a given hulls to end up with the perfect amount of fill to end up with a ideal crimp.

Hence if we take 20g, and for 7/8oz loads, you can see the different type wads and the amount of room that they will take up in the hulls.
The same goes for 12 gauge and different wads as well.


The shell on the right has the correct amount of fill, while the shell on the left has too much fill for the hull isntead.


Now that we have the right loading amounts to get the shot to the top of inner fold line, lets talk about crimp.



First off, we need to adjust the pre crimper.  In the above photo, it not only the center of hole in the center of the crimp that we are worried about, but the how much the pre crimper is crimping down the side of the hull.  So in your shell crimp above, we can see that the crimp line of the hull do not stop at the inside top of the crimp, but go over the top of crimp and down the outside of the hull.  So this tells me that you have your pre crimper set a touch too low, and it over crimping the hull to start with.

Next on crimp depth, use a dime for the depth of the crimp on the hull.  If can very a few a touch from hull type and load type, but a dimes thickness of crimp should be close to your standards depth of crimp for most hulls.

Now the last thing we need to cover, is tapering of the crimp.  Hence that is the ouside top of crimp that is rounded inwards so the shell feeds cleanly into the chamber.

So with the final taper crimper of the machine adjusted correctly, you end up with the top of outside edge of crimp rolled/tapered inward, instead of the top of crimp of your shell bulged outward isntead.


So for the most part, pretty much every thing on your shell looks ok, minus that you have the pre-crimper set a touch too far down for the hulls in play, and don't have the final taper crimper set correctly, which is both leaving the out side crimp top buldge outward, and which is leaving the center hole in the crimp as well.

If you tell up what machine you are on, we can tell you how to adjust the final taper crimper correctly to prefect the reloads.

You're Golden,


But if you switch from HS to CF, STS, or gun club hulls, they are longer than the HS hulls and you will need to readjust the machine.

Or if your just loading what you can get your hands on, should be able to come up with a setting that will crimp the shorter HS hulls correctly, but end up with a slight swirl in the longer hulls crimps.