Lee collet die.......amazing!

[Luke_NL]

Since I was ordering a few odds and ends anyway, I decided on adding an LCD for my .243W to the order. You all made me do it... All should be here in a couple of days.

I have been getting pretty consistent results with a forster neck die (on a CoAx press) and am pretty curious if the LCD will improve on those. Any tips other than "take it apart & polish it"?

 

[Clod-NC]

Hi Luke,hi all
Well,Luke in my experience a good thing to do if you want to make the best out of your LCD is mainly,to take the mandrel,wet sanding paper(600grit)and bring the mandrel diameter down .001 by spinning it with a drill,make sure you polish the whole length of the ram;WD40 is a good lubricant for this task;go slow,measure regularly with your micrometer.Then when setting your die follow Lee's recommendations,but if with a softer approach:I'll explain
a:screw the LCD in till it touches the shellholder,b:screw in one more turn,put a case in the shellholder and push your ram up,c:if you haven't felt any slight pressure on the ram at the top of the stroke,most likely you have a little more to do,d:now you can finalize your setting by incrementing very slowly and softly the tightness of the die on the case,make sure you don't overdo it and leave imprints on the case neck.Once you've got what you want,index your die with a marker,and make sure, if you put a Hornady lock ring or similar,to put the O ring underneath it.Hope it helps.

 

[1holeaddict]

Hi Luke,hi all
Well,Luke in my experience a good thing to do if you want to make the best out of your LCD is mainly,to take the mandrel,wet sanding paper(600grit)and bring the mandrel diameter down .001 by spinning it with a drill,make sure you polish the whole length of the ram;WD40 is a good lubricant for this task;go slow,measure regularly with your micrometer.Then when setting your die follow Lee's recommendations,but if with a softer approach:I'll explain
a:screw the LCD in till it touches the shellholder,b:screw in one more turn,put a case in the shellholder and push your ram up,c:if you haven't felt any slight pressure on the ram at the top of the stroke,most likely you have a little more to do,d:now you can finalize your setting by incrementing very slowly and softly the tightness of the die on the case,make sure you don't overdo it and leave imprints on the case neck.Once you've got what you want,index your die with a marker,and make sure, if you put a Hornady lock ring or similar,to put the O ring underneath it.Hope it helps.

Well i also ordered 3 of the LCD's this week. I have had great results with my Forster and Redding set ups and was interested to see if it can get better. I have an old Lyman Turret press that is rock solid and plan on putting these dies in it and leaving them setup. What is the reason for using the Hornady lock ring with an O ring?

 

[Clod-NC]

Hi Addict,hi all

Well,from what I know and read,here and elsewhere,the main reason for it,and it was also R. Lee's assumption,is that an O ring under your stop ring will provide a suppler mount for the die,allowing it to comply and adapt more easily to the forces and constraints involved by the press ram when you actuate it.It's alleged merit being above all to reduce or eliminate the causes for run out.I suppose that along with G.Salazar's articles on the subject,various top notch posters here,the best being Boyd Allen himself,advocated for this trick.I wouldn't have any reason to doubt them.

 

[akin]

Like other people I have suffered from unpredictable run out using Redding bushing dies.
I decided to give the Lee collet die a try.
After I recieved the die I made some modifications, I cleaned all the burrs from the inside of the collet and I made up some custom mandrels. The mandrel that came with the .308 die ws 0.3058 diameter so I made 0.3065, 0.3070, 0.3075 mandrels. I ended up using the 0.3065 one which after springback gave me the 0.001 tension I was looking for.
Fired cases were full length sized and the shoulder setback using a redding full length bushing sizer with the bushing removed. Then all cases were cleaned with st/st media for 4 hours, cases were length sized and internal and externally chamfered. Then all cases were sized with the Lee collet die 2 x with a 180 degree rotation between the 2 operations.

I loaded 31 cases with IMR 8028 XBR and Berger 168g hybrids this morning.

28 had bullet runout of less than 0.0005" (most were 0.0002" - 0.0003")
2 had 0.001"
1 had 0.002"

Also as the inside of the neck is sized the bullet seating force was very consistant.

This is totally amazing after the Redding collet setup I had which I struggled to get runouts better than 0.0015"

Now lets go see how they shoot!!!

Jon

Love Lee collet dies but there tex support is a little lacking from my experience

 

[RegionRat]

@akin , just FYI since I see you are new here... nothing wrong with dredging up an old post, but the one you are replying to was roughly ten years old and some of the folks have not been seen in many years.

You can look at the dates for the age of the post. You can also hover your cursor over the poster's name and you will see if they are even still active.