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mapper
July 28th, 2014, 09:06 PM
Rant on:

I have found that lee dies work for me in the following applications..
Pistol,rifle charging die, universal decapping die..

Will work but not impressed in rifle size dies,
No joy in a seating die in 222 with a 50 gr vmax..

Yes I know they are cheap..
And "ya pays your money and takes your chances"

But eventually I'll go redding or rcbs.
And yes a decent seating stem may solve the issue..
But I'm a bit put off thinking I had tools to do a job and finding they would not work..

I'm still happy with the other lee stuff I have, press,auto disk, turrets, funnel, auto prime, and pistol dies

But my experience with the rifle dies is right there with their saftey scale.

RANT OFF:

Lees solution..
http://leeprecision.net/support/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/563/14/v-max-bullets-need-custom-bullet-seating-plug

Airgator0470
July 28th, 2014, 09:53 PM
When it comes to dies... for me it's RCBS and/or Hornady.

SB
July 28th, 2014, 10:14 PM
RCBS is good stuff, my favorite so far.

Dale Gribble
July 29th, 2014, 07:57 AM
All my dies are Lee, never had a problem seating anything.

seadog
July 29th, 2014, 07:58 AM
I have Dillon and RCBS but prefer Forster bench rest dies.

The Forster seating die is more accurate .

mapper
July 29th, 2014, 02:25 PM
Radio communication sent to the mother ship....
Known issue....
They are sending a seating stem for a 22 hornet. Techdude dave says it will cure the issue with the v max.

Good customer service. But we will see how it plays out.

I still have my eye on the redding and rcbs sets though.

Johnny
July 29th, 2014, 07:21 PM
I have RCBS,Hornaday,and Lee,have a set of lyman that I have had for 50yrs I use most of them every year.I personaly like to neck size for bolt rifles,so I have both full length and neck sizing dies.

substratum
July 29th, 2014, 08:24 PM
I used to load everything with rcbs... .222, .30-30, .38/.357... got rid of all of those dies a few years back given that it had been decades since I owned a gun in those calibers. I still load 8x57 with rcbs. I just purchased my first set of Lee in .30-06, but haven't used it yet (for my son's nifty Savage 110). Looking forward to trying them out. Was considering Lee for 9mm & 7.62x39, too.

Johnny
July 29th, 2014, 09:15 PM
I have not had a problem with lee dies I have them in .44 mag,45 acp,neck dies 2506,270,7mm08,Have fl dies in rcbs 308,223,3006,270 ,357mag no problems

Rumbler
July 29th, 2014, 11:32 PM
Dillon, Lee, and RCBS here.

I can easily agree that the RCBS dies are the most precise.

But I can get .002 runout on my .308 match ammo reloads using Lee's dies so I can't complain. I've also had some great customer service experiences with them.

RCBS? Exceptional all the way around. Let me give you an example that arrived in the mail today:

"Someone" tried to trim a friggin .30 caliber steel case in our 20 year old RCBS trim-pro case trimmer. It ruined the cutter head.
"Someone" worked the handle in the 25+ year old rockchucker so hard it came out of the toggle block taking several threads with it.


I called RCBS and told them EXACTLY what I just typed and that I would like to pay for the replacement parts if they were still available with my debit card.

The guy on the other end of the phone line said: "Those are warranty covered failures. I'll get the parts out to you today if you will give me your shipping address."

WinterSoldier
July 30th, 2014, 05:20 AM
If you ever get into the really interesting stuff you will be using CH4D dies. Got those. Got Redding. Got Hornaday. Got RCBS. Got Lee. I've had dies for years for calibers I've never had, though I think I may have "caught up" recently. I've still got the "problem" of brass for calibers I don't have... but who cares? Maybe someday I'll buy a gun in 5.56mm, or in .297/.230 Morris... or even .40 S&W. You know... the useless calibers!

Dies all seem to work more or less, except sometimes not so well. If anyone makes a proper die set for the 1895 Nagant I dunno who the hell it is...

But then I'm not trying to shoot a hair off of a gnat's bee-hind.

Only "major brand" NOT represented amongst my dies is Dillon. I've got a Dillon primer pocket swager. That's a powerful gizmo. You can really mangle a case head with it... But I've got no Dillon dies... or presses.

seadog
July 30th, 2014, 07:58 AM
I have CH4D dies in .50 but I think most wouldn't know or care.

I mean,who else on this forum loads .50?

Rumbler
July 30th, 2014, 08:02 AM
.408 CheyTac is as close as I can get to .50BMG. :(

seadog
July 30th, 2014, 08:23 AM
I'm working on building a .416 Barrett bolt gun.
Tooling up for another expensive caliber.

FLT
July 30th, 2014, 08:46 AM
I have CH4D dies in .50 but I think most wouldn't know or care.

I mean,who else on this forum loads .50?

There's at least one more person but he uses Dillon equipment .

WinterSoldier
July 30th, 2014, 03:10 PM
.50 BMG, no... but I do load .50 Swedish more commonly known as 12.7x44R, a black powder round used in the Swedish rolling block.

mapper
August 3rd, 2014, 12:49 PM
Seating stem came from lee, solved the problem...

But..that did not stop the change over to all green rifle dies.

Its for the environment ......

GrantA
August 7th, 2014, 09:09 AM
Seating stem came from lee, solved the problem...
You can open up the Lee stem with a drill for long ogive bullets like amax & zmax. Not a thing wrong with that


But..that did not stop the change over to all green rifle dies.
Forster Red is an addicting color too :-)