Lee Collet Die Problem

[tom h]

I use a forster press, lapua brass, no problem. Ck. the die

 

[rockable]

Large primer or small primer "palma" brass?

Large primer pocket. I will confirm today but I think the mandrel is bottoming out in the brass. Probably the Forster shell holder is a little thinner than the stand shellholder. I will verify but that is my suspicion at this point.

 

[rockable]

Well, this has been an interesting study. Here is what I learned.

• The Forster shellholder arrangement is .127 deep
• My Lee #2 shellholders are also .127 deep
• As luck would have it, I grabbed the one RCBS #3 that I own when I tested the Lee press against the Forster. The RCBS shellholder is .140 deep and worked.
• The mandrel pin bottoms out in the die with about .117 of the case protruding. Apparently, moving the collet up .010 is not enough.
• Also, I have a set of Redding shellholders for the .308 case. They measure from .131 (+.002) to .141 (+.010). (I did this with a caliper so it's hard to hold everything perfectly square and vertical, I may be off a thou or two but you get the idea.)
• By Using the RCBS, I now end up with a .307 i.d in my case. The only way to improve that is to shorten the pin. I doubt Lee holds that pin very close in length tolerance and I must have gotten a long one. (Screwing the top out does no good because all of the internals move accordingly, just in case you were thinking about that.)

Thanks for all your help and for the link to the other member's set up instructions. His explanation that the pin could bottom out in thicker brass led the way for me to easily find the cause of this problem.

Rock

 

[BoydAllen]

The way to increase your neck tension is to decrease the OD of the pin, or order a smaller diameter one from Lee. I ran into this situation in the past and chucked the pin in a corded drill and spun it in some folded over 320 grit wet and dry sandpaper until I had taken .001 off. It worked fine. I hate to admit it but way back in the day I toggled my Rock Chucker so hard that my .220 Swift cases' necks were ribbed. Since then I have figured out that you can't make the ID of the case any smaller than the mandrel. Yea, I know....brilliant.

 

[GrocMax]

Ding,ding, ding! We have a winner. Apparently the Forster shellholder and Lee Collet Die are incompatible. (Didn' have time to figure out why and don't really care. No problem with my Lee Classiic and standard shell holder. Thanks for the help.

Lee collet dies work absolutely proper with a std Forster jawholder setup. Set the die up so the handle is about level, NOT with it in any overcam position like a std sizing die.

 

[lurcher]

My results with the Lee collet neck sizer improve dramatically when I anneal.

+1 if you have fired the cases and resized many times then I have noticed the ability of the LCND to size the necks falls away unless you anneal

 

[rockable]

Well I'm a dumb a$$. Looks like I had an annealing problem more than anything else. Sorry for the false alarm. The RCBS shellholder does give you a little earlier lift, if you need it. I really like the Lee Collet dies and will keep using them.