Come on fellas

[Rsadams]

They won't tell you how to set up a die correctly because they get tired of getting phone calls of why won't this fit my chamber... Same reason ar15 makers started overgassing guns .. you shooting weak Tula ammo in a properly gassed gun for 5.56 with a h buffer , they gets phone calls as to why it short strokes.. you spend a grand on a rifle and shoot the worse ammo made through it and wonder why there's no accuracy or function... So they just started chicken sh#tting the gas port size... And people stop calling.... I see this on a gun range on a daily basis and have just given up..

 

[BoydAllen]

RCBS believes a cam over is appropriate. So do what you feel is right. No big deal for the millions who aren't shooting 1000 m open class.

Brass is a lot more expensive than when I started reloading, with the usual headspace tolerances of factory rifles, if you cam over, after just a few reloads you will be looking at incipient separations, and having to pay for new cases. I set my dies for factory rifles as carefully as I do for those that are built around custom actions and match grade barrels with tight neck chambers. Doesn't cost a penny. I bought my Stoney Point "headspace gauge" back when they first came out and have used it for everything ever since.

 

[Rsadams]

Brass is a lot more expensive than when I started reloading, with the usual headspace tolerances of factory rifles, if you cam over, after just a few reloads you will be looking at incipient separations, and having to pay for new cases. I set my dies for factory rifles as carefully as I do for those that are built around custom actions and match grade barrels with tight neck chambers. Doesn't cost a penny. I bought my Stoney Point "headspace gauge" back when they first came out and have used it for everything ever since.

Yup.. once you set the die per rifle you can just knock them out... Setting a die up per instructions will lead to very short brass life or worse...

 

[timeout]

Yup.. once you set the die per rifle you can just knock them out... Setting a die up per instructions will lead to very short brass life or worse...

I'm pretty sure it cost me an accurate 788 Rem many years ago die to light primer strikes and misfires.

 

[ImBIllT]

I'm pretty sure it cost me an accurate 788 Rem many years ago die to light primer strikes and misfires.

While adjusting the die may have fixed the problem for your reloads, if the headspace was so great that it led to misfires I would say that it bordered on dangerous. Setting the die up according to the instructions SHOULD leave you with a SAAMI minimum case. A minimum case in a maximum chamber SHOULD function properly and safely, despite its negative impacts on brass life.

 

[ShootDots]

While adjusting the die may have fixed the problem for your reloads, if the headspace was so great that it led to misfires I would say that it bordered on dangerous. Setting the die up according to the instructions SHOULD leave you with a SAAMI minimum case. A minimum case in a maximum chamber SHOULD function properly and safely, despite its negative impacts on brass life.

In your statement in part "setting the die up according to the instructions SHOULD leave you with a SAAMI minimum case">>> this is not always the case! Using SOME Redding dies, you can cam-over and STILL NOT TOUCH the shoulder! On a few of my Redding dies I have had to mill down the shellholder 15 thousandths in order to set the shoulder back up to 3 thousandths! That means the die was cut TOO LONG! This is why I now use Whidden dies whenever possible! Whidden dies have NEVER exhibited that problem.

 

[chop house]

and would get some stressed cases and even a few case head seperations

not to mention donuts, which i did not know of nor recognize... wondering why some individual carts where 'so hot'... dang thick necked buzzards

 

[ImBIllT]

In your statement in part "setting the die up according to the instructions SHOULD leave you with a SAAMI minimum case">>> this is not always the case! Using SOME Redding dies, you can cam-over and STILL NOT TOUCH the shoulder! On a few of my Redding dies I have had to mill down the shellholder 15 thousandths in order to set the shoulder back up to 3 thousandths! That means the die was cut TOO LONG! This is why I now use Whidden dies whenever possible! Whidden dies have NEVER exhibited that problem.

That's why I said "SHOULD". Their goal is to make a die that can turn a fired case back into a SAAMI minimum case so that it will function in any properly chambered firearm. If there's a problem, they want it to be with the gun, not the die. As mentioned earlier, the instructions are simple and leave out custom adjustments to avoid having to explain the problem to 10% or more of their customers. Perfection does not happen, manufacturing tolerances exist, and mistakes are made. Their tolerances probably specify that the SAAMI minimum is as small as the die can be, and it may be allowed to be one or two thousandths larger, thus producing a case that should still function in a SAAMI minimum chamber. The dies that you had a problem with could have slipped through QC.

I have experienced that very problem, but it wasn't a QC issue. My dad had headspaced the gun on Lapua brass because he couldn't find his headspace gauge in that caliber and figured that if I was using Lapua brass in the gun, then that would work. The result was a chamber that was smaller than the SAAMI minimum chamber, but larger than the SAAMI minimum cartridge. It functions perfectly well, but when the cases get a little a sticky my body die will not move the shoulder. One of my other dies will bump it a thou, so I haven't bothered grinding anything off. On a side note, lots of gunsmiths seem to think that a "tight" chamber will shoot better, so they set them up with very little headspace. The tight chamber may shoot better during fire-forming, but once your dies are set up for your gun and your brass has been fired, the point is moot. Running the reamer in a couple thou past minimum headspace just gives you a little more case capacity. I always fire-form jamming hard.

 

[timeout]

While adjusting the die may have fixed the problem for your reloads, if the headspace was so great that it led to misfires I would say that it bordered on dangerous. Setting the die up according to the instructions SHOULD leave you with a SAAMI minimum case. A minimum case in a maximum chamber SHOULD function properly and safely, despite its negative impacts on brass life.

It fired fine with factory ammo. I didn't know anything about headspace or bumping the shoulder back in those days. My problem started with setting up the die according to the die manufacture's spec. I had 2 gunsmiths check the rifle over and they couldn't find the problem. Of course they test fired with factory ammo, not my reloads. I don't think that I had a MINIMUM case. No way to prove that now, almost 50 years later.

 

[ImBIllT]

It fired fine with factory ammo. I didn't know anything about headspace or bumping the shoulder back in those days. My problem started with setting up the die according to the die manufacture's spec. I had 2 gunsmiths check the rifle over and they couldn't find the problem. Of course they test fired with factory ammo, not my reloads. I don't think that I had a MINIMUM case. No way to prove that now, almost 50 years later.

Could have been a short die then. I would bet that more are long than short though. Also, consider that cartridges are not normally manufactured to be SAAMI minimum. A SAAMI max cartridge should function correctly in a SAAMI minimum chamber, so with mass produced ammo the target is somewhere in the middle. If your factory ammunition was somewhere in between, and you chamber a little over the max, the difference between the two could still be less than the difference between a max chamber and a minimum cartridge, so it's possible to have a chamber that is too deep, and still function with factory ammo, but not a case sized to the SAAMI minimum.

 

[timeout]

In your statement in part "setting the die up according to the instructions SHOULD leave you with a SAAMI minimum case">>> this is not always the case! Using SOME Redding dies, you can cam-over and STILL NOT TOUCH the shoulder! On a few of my Redding dies I have had to mill down the shellholder 15 thousandths in order to set the shoulder back up to 3 thousandths! That means the die was cut TOO LONG! This is why I now use Whidden dies whenever possible! Whidden dies have NEVER exhibited that problem.

I had that same experience with a Redding 22-250 FL die.

 

[ImBIllT]

Seems like a Redding trend is appearing. It is a Redding body die that won't my shoulder on my match .308's.

 

[BoydAllen]

There is one thing that should be mentioned here, and I have no idea if it applies to the situations that have been posted abut, but I get the feeling that lot of shooters bump back cases that have been only fired once. Speaking of bolt action rifles, more commonly than not a once fired case will not be tight at the shoulder and will still have clearance. If you try to bump back such a case you may not be able to. On the other hand if you set your FL die to duplicate the shoulder to head measurement of the once fired case, the case that you sized with that setting will probably chamber just fine. When I have the time, given that I am usually loading at the range, I fire and size one case, neck sizing, with a stout load, and measure the shoulder to head dimension after each firing. After perhaps three or four firings the shoulder to head dimension will reach its maximum. It will feel tight when I chamber it and I will have arrived at the maximum attainable dimension for that rifle or if a switch barrel (chambered with a shoulder) that barrel. It is that dimension that I bump back from, never from a once fired dimension, unless my test setting the die for the as fired dimension does not produce a case that chambers properly. The last thing that you want to do is not have a gauge for these measurements because setting dies by feel makes the assumption that the die is small enough for the chamber that it is being used with. The proper way to proceed is to set the die using a gauge and then if the bolt close is not what you want, you need a different die, because adjusting the die farther into the press will bump your shoulders too much which will lead first to incipient separations, and if you continue to use the cases separations.

 

[Ledd Slinger]

Didnt see it mentioned, sorry if it was. Another key is to have freshly annealed brass when doing initial fire forming to set headspace on a sizing die. New Lapua brass appears to be annealed AFTER forming, but I know many other brands usually don't anneal their brass after the forming process. Regardless of what type of brass I am using, brand new or used, I will usually anneal them right out of the packaging before loading them. They may or may not 'need' it, but I am fully sure they are properly annealed prior to any use this way.

I have never needed to fire a freshly annealed case more than once with a normal pressure load to get good chamber form on the brass for setting my dies. I've measured them after the first firing and many firings later with multiple more annealings and the fired case measurements are always the same.

And no matter how hard you try, you'll never get as consistent bump on headspace as you will with annealed brass. The more you fire the cases without annealing, the worse it will get. I don't recall reloading manuals even mentioning annealing. Been so long since I've read the instructions portion of a manual...

You can neck size, but eventually you will have to FL size the shoulder and body to keep from having hard bolt closings. Then your load may act differently. So you're better off to just FL size all the time. I've never met a high level BR competition shooter that neck sizes their brass.


.

 

[M99]

First of all, this is not about RCBS's products or customer service. Recently, on their Facebook page they put up a how to do it video on how to set a FL die. They said raise the ram, adjust the die until it touches the shell holder, then lower the ram and turn the die an additional quarter turn, just like their directions read. Come on fellows is that the best that you can do? That sort of advice causes more problems than it solves.

Basic instructions are meant for new re-loaders with factory firearms. For that group, which are probably the majority of their customers, those instructions work and work safely. For competition shooters, many with custom actions and custom chambers, we need to understand what is going on and be able to figure it out without using those basic instructions. They are a starting point, not the end point.

 

[Raythemanroe]

My Harrels is setup that way, cam over to get just shy of .002

Ray

 

[M99]

If RCBS or any other reloading equipment supply company, explained in detail all the steps many of us go through in order to end up with 100 or so rounds that we can trust in a match, 90% of their potential customers would give up even the thought of reloading. It would take an entire book for those explanations, not a short insert with their dies.

 

[swd]

Setting up some RCBS does like that is no harm no foul, lol. I've seen at least 3 sets of RCBS FL dies that were so long in head space they wouldn't bump a shoulder back. One set I had to shorten .027".

 

[Brians356]

Setting up some RCBS does like that is no harm no foul, lol. I've seen at least 3 sets of RCBS FL dies that were so long in head space they wouldn't bump a shoulder back. One set I had to shorten .027".

I suppose it's possible a chamber could be reamed short enough to render a standard FL die too long. If you know the chamber is within SAAMI spec for headspace, I would be tempted to return such a die as defective. Were yours all three for the same rifle, or different guns and chambering?

PS a shell holder out of spec could cause this as well. Unlikely, but possible. But then three FL dies too long also defies the odds.
-

 

[swd]

I suppose it's possible a chamber could be reamed short enough to render a standard FL die too long. If you know the chamber is within SAAMI spec for headspace, I would be tempted to return such a die as defective. Were yours all three for the same rifle, or different guns and chambering?
-

They were all for different clients. All the rifles were in correct headspace. I trimmed them to size correctly. Carbide is your friend.