BoydAllen
Gold $$ Contributor
Here are a couple of tricks that readers can use to make the best of a one piece FL die and standard seater. Decap with a punch or decapping die. Remove the decapping stem from your FL die. Lube the case including the inside of the neck (the latter the same as the case body). Size the case paying close attention to bump. Use a expander mandrel and die to expand lubed case necks, doing that operation slowly and paying strict attention to how the effort required builds as the mandrel is inserted in the neck. With a little experience you will be able to stop, the case when the effort rises to the point where the case would be made more crooked, reverse the ram a bit and go again, doing this several times until the neck is fully expanded. By limiting the axial force on the case during expanding, you will stay below the yield strength of the shoulder and necks will stay straighter in relation to cases' bodies. Next, trim to make case mouths square, chamfer, and then, after priming and charging bullets seat in two steps, going half way and then rotating the round a half turn before finishing. If your seater is a loose fit on your sized brass at the base of the die, you can use scotch or masking tape inside the die, applied evenly just above the opening to tighten the fit, and improve alignment. One last thing that I forgot to mention is to clean the lube out of the inside of the case necks after expanding, and of course off of the outside of the cases after sizing. The key to straight ammo is largely in the sizing, and alternative approach to that, for unturned case necks, that has given a number of shooters superior concentricity, particularly when paired with unturned necks, is to use a two step sizing procedure, sizing the neck first with a Lee Collet Die, and then the body with a body die, paying the same close attention to bump as you would when setting a FL die. I have had a lot of positive reports from shooters that have gone to this procedure.