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Foster die problem

tisme

I've got 3 forster seating dies. 2 of the seating dies starting sticking, the small cup that touches the top of the bullet had expanded and would not fit through the hole in bullet cup resulting in the bullet being seated too deep.
I'm using the 2 dies with berger and hornady bullets so it's not just one make of bullet doing it. Both dies have seated around 2000 bullets. I've turned to outside of the cup down with some wet and dry and they work again.
Anyone else have the same trouble and how did you fix it?
 
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I have had this happen one time over the many years that I have been using them. You should call them and relate the problem, they are great folks to work with.

Just guessing on my part, but if you have a VLD type seater stem, then used a regular bullet with a LOT of case neck tension, the thin part of the seater stem may conform to the shape of that bullet that is not a vld....just guessing on my part.

Again, call the company
 
Have had this issue with Forster seaters. My opinion is the stems are made too thin. They could go another .030 to .045 larger diameter on the rod. With too much neck tension they will bell out because of this.
 
AckleymanII said:
I have had this happen one time over the many years that I have been using them. You should call them and relate the problem, they are great folks to work with.

Just guessing on my part, but if you have a VLD type seater stem, then used a regular bullet with a LOT of case neck tension, the thin part of the seater stem may conform to the shape of that bullet that is not a vld....just guessing on my part.

Again, call the company
Click to expand...

I'll e mail them ta
As for case next tension I run .002 tension and on the 308 only seat .030 so not a lot of tension
 
I'm guessing that Forster chooses to use a seating contact point closer to the ogive for better seating depth accuracy. The drawback is that they have to make the seater cup thinner. They do sell individual replacement components.
 
I had the issue when I used for compressed loads. I called them and they said really not for use with compressed loads... They also sent some black ones out, that they said were a little harder than the metal/plain colored ones.
 
I wouldn't think that a seater plug would do that, but then I have always used RCBS dies.
Definitely alert the manufacturer. If they don't know its happening they can't fix it. Most manufacturers will at least send you a new plug to solve your issues.
 
Ron AKA hit the nail so to speak.
I have .22 Hornet die that the seating punch expanded in. These cups run down into a close fitting bore and are easy to expand until they drag on the sleeve. If the thin wimpy Hornet case will expand the seater almost any real heavier case would do the same.
You might try flaring your FL sized case mouths with something like a Lee universal expander die. This will insure the heel of the bullet gets by the case mouth without having to expand the case to jump the corner.


RonAKA said:
I'm guessing that Forster chooses to use a seating contact point closer to the ogive for better seating depth accuracy. The drawback is that they have to make the seater cup thinner. They do sell individual replacement components.
Click to expand...
 
I use Forster dies a lot and have done so for many years. I have never "knowingly" had this problem, so I have to ask...I know it sounds stupid but, how do you know when the die does this???? Does it always just seat the bullet too deep???
 
I think you have a bullet problem the dies aren't pointed correctly for the bullet . If your trying to seat a vld bullet with a standard die that has stand problem with all dies .
What you did you had the dies and was seating the standard bullets fine . Then you got the pointy vld bullets .
Simple test remove the seating stem and put the bullet in it with the stem vertical the bullet should be held tight if not you have the wrong bullets for the stem . Larry
 
msinc said:
I use Forster dies a lot and have done so for many years. I have never "knowingly" had this problem, so I have to ask...I know it sounds stupid but, how do you know when the die does this???? Does it always just seat the bullet too deep???
Click to expand...

For me, I noticed that the stem seemed to be sticking in the channel. A loud thunk when it finally would let the sleeve slide back down under the spring pressure (after returning the ram to the bottom). I took the die apart because i thought it was "dirty" and noticed after cleaning that the seating stem was not sliding smoothly like my other Forsters seating dies. Looked at the stem under magnification and saw that it was slightly belled vs straight like my other ones.
 
tisme said:
Anyone else have the same trouble and how did you fix it?
Click to expand...

I experienced the same exact thing on a 222 seating die (the basic one without the micrometer adjustment). I wasn't shooting compressed loads, but the neck tension could have contributed to the problem. At the time I was shooting 222 brass my Dad had formed from 223 brass in the 70's. The necks were not annealed. I probably seated less than 500 bullets before the seater belled enough to cause the die not to work properly. I bought a couple of new seating stems from Forster, but never installed them

What did I do to fix it? I wound up converting to Redding competition seating dies. The seating plug on the Redding die is much stronger. But even Redding says not to use it with compressed loads.
 
Yer I might do the same and buy some Redding seating dies. Forster got back to me today saying they could sell me some cups that might be harder!
 
Interesting discussion here, thank you all for the comments. I started reloading .223 last year with RCBS sizer and seating dies. When I developed an issue with the sizing ball on the RCBS FL 16 die (more on that later), I switched over to a set of Forster dies with the Benchrest seater die. I immediately had trouble with the seater die and the spring loaded sleeve hanging up momentarily when lowering the ram. Unable to determine the problem i sent the die back to Forster for inspection along with a handful of my prepared brass and some VLD bullets. Returned very quickly (Forster is very responsive) with note saying they had replaced the cup as it had cracked probably due to neck tensions issues. Even though there were no signs of bullet shaving going in or when pulling the bullet. So, I resized all of my brass with the Forster full length and expander ball. But the same problem kept occurring. What I finally figured out and now confirmed thanks to this discussion board is that the cup is so thin that it is expanding around the ogive and holding the bullet, preventing the release of the seated bullet and case. This all occurs just for a second or less but it is definitely an issue. This seater die will produce bullet run out of .004 to .005 on brass that has .001 neck run out measured on the Sinclair run our gauge. I am back to using the RCBS seater die with acceptable results. A note on the RCBS FL sizer; while using it i started to have some bullet shaving when seating. I called RCBS and was told that there was a batch of stems with expander balls that had not been properly hardened and they sent me a new one. sure enough the measurement of used one was almost .03 smaller. The new RCBS stem works just fine as well now.
 
I sent my .223 Ultra Seater back for the same issue. They asked for bullets and brass and asked if I was compressing the loads. 24gr varget, so maybe a little.
Forster replaced the stem and the sleeve, which had .005 runout at the seater end. They appologized for the out of spec sleeve but thought that my .223 necks were sized too small.
Sure enough my expander was worn down about .0015, so I replaced the expander.

Btw the dies have seated at least 12,000 rounds. Pretty happy with their service, turn around time etc.

I do agree that they are thin though!
 
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