Ledd Slinger
Silver $$ Contributor
On an interesting side note, figuring out how to seat a bullet in the 338 Norma brass without a 338 Norma seating die was a fun exercise. First thought was to just run it through my 338 Lapua seating die (Redding Competition Seater). That was a 'no-go'... Not enough taper in the 338 Norma case for it go very far into the sliding sleeve of the 338 Lapua die before binding up. Hmmmm, time to disassemble...
I just set the sliding sleeve aside and reassembled the seating die, minus the seating stem which is held in place by the sliding sleeve. Slid the seating stem onto the top of the bullet that I wanted to seat, set the bullet with seating stem atop it into a piece of brass, aligning the best I could, put it all in the shell holder, raised the ram, and adjusted the micrometer as needed. It worked great. For kicks, I measured concentricity on the two dummy rounds seated this way. Runout on the 285 gr ELD-M was 0.002" and 0.001" on the 300 gr Hybrid.
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Can just take a seater stem and tap the bullet into the case with a rawhide mallet too. Pretty simple.