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Shaving a sizing die.

Maybe because you seem to equate what you get charged for a machinist with what they pay a machinist. They are 2 different rates.


Ledd Slinger said:
Yeah nevermind the overhead of the building lease, utilities, liability insurance, tooling and machinery upkeep, business taxes and whatever else. They'll only charge you for the cost of employee benefits over the hourly wage they pay them.

But I guess you spoke to a CNC operator that didn't speak English at a Christmas dinner one time so what do I know about business overhead and costs? Geez I'm such an idiot sometimes. :confused:
Click to expand...
 
ireload2 said:
Larry is not right and neither are you. Save your holiday comments. They have nothing to do with your never running a surface grinder.
Click to expand...

Okay... I'll skip the holiday comment (removed).... lol

No I have not personally ran a surface grinder. What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
Pay to have them done, and/or they came with custom dies.

Just had one done (Shiraz/Norma 6Dasher #2) last summer. From the time I walked into the machinist's door until I walked out with surface ground shell holder in hand, no more then 15-minutes past and he said "no charge"

I have used the "feeler gauge" method to rise a case off the shell-holder, and while it does work I found there to be several displeasing limitations:
- found it to be very limited in the amount of feeler gauge thickness that can fit under the cases
- found feeler gauges to be cumbersome to keep in place and/or to re-insert
- found out that feeler gauges can get bent/crushed/damaged very easily from repeated operation
- found that some feeler gauges are a poor fit under the case all together, that can induce run-out
- cases have to be de-primed
-*- work okay for a temporary fix or a "get by" in a pinch.
For me, I find a surface ground shell holder has far less limitations and are not cumbersome to use, that can get more case into the die then can by feeler gauge. Plus like stated earlier, the ground shell holder can be used with any die(s) of that size and will have a true deck height, unlike some.
 
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Ledd Slinger said:
Yeah nevermind the overhead of the building lease, utilities, liability insurance, tooling and machinery upkeep, business taxes and whatever else. They'll only charge you for the cost of employee benefits over the hourly wage they pay them.

But I guess you spoke to a CNC operator that didn't speak English at a Christmas dinner one time so what do I know about business overhead and costs? Geez I'm such an idiot sometimes. :confused:
Click to expand...
If you want to be a idiot that's cool
I wish you and your family a
Merry Christmas Larry
 
Then you are like the pope talking about sex when you refer to everyone else and their surface ground shell holders.
Surface grinding may not be the best process if the shell holder is not perfectly parallel between the load bearing surfaces.
Sure how many machinists are going to give their labor away? What would happen if you took 10 shell holders to the same machinist.
You personal anecdote is not necessarily worth anything...
I think you are off in the weeds saying you can use a particular surface ground shell holder on any die of that size.
I bet that you have not checked your surface ground shell holder with a depth mike or height gage to see if the machinist ground it the top parallel to the contact face. Your run of the mill machinist would not know what to check and probably you don't either. And neither of you would have a good idea of how to set it up.

dmoran said:
Okay... I'll skip the holiday comment.... lol

No I have not personally ran a surface grinder. What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
Pay to have them done, and/or they came with custom dies.

Just had one done (the Shiraz Dasher #2) last summer. From the time I walked into the machinist's door until I walked out with surface ground shell holder in hand, no more the 15-minutes and he said "no charge"

I have used the "feeler gauge" method to rise a case off the shell-holder deck height, and while it does work I found there to be several displeasing limitations:
- found it to be very limited in the amount of feeler gauge thickness that can fit under the cases
- found feeler gauges to be cumbersome to keep in place and/or to re-insert
- found out that feeler gauges can get bent/crushed/damaged very easily from repeated operation
- found that some feeler gauges are a poor fit under the case all together, that can induce run-out
- cases has to be de-primed
-*- work okay for a temporary fix or a "get by" in a pinch.
For me, I find a surface ground shell holder has far less limitations and are far less cumbersome to use, that can get more case into the die then can by feeler gauge. Plus like stated earlier, the ground shell holder can be used with any die(s) of that size and will have a true deck height, unlike some.
Click to expand...
 
Any how, I load for several belted head cartridges and I ignore the belt. Using my Dremel tool I grind down one of my many surplus Lee shell holders making it thinner (they are real hard tool steel) if I get a hard closing bolt and use an under $10 feeler gauge from Home Depot to use the shoulder of the case to head-space on. I feel my way into producing more case squashing until I can barely feel resistance with a stripped bolt; in most cases the .010 gauge works just fine; should the bolt remain hard closing I use a thinner gauge like .008 that allows for squashing the case more. I believe using the belt to head-space might provide problems like inconsistent belt widths from case to case, lot to lot and as the entire case in front of the belt is subjected to some 60,000 psi, give or take, causing expansion in all directions including making the case stretch. This case stretching would probably exceed the elastic limits of the brass (yield strength) and take but one time to happen. Head separations might occur upon repeated F/L size ops on the belt

I like to use once fired brass because it is real cheap but realize being fired in a variety of chambers will have dimensional variations thus a need for uniformity.

When using my crude and cheap feeler gauge method I am careful not to "spear" the gauge with a decap pin and use ground on marks on the side of the ground down shell holder as a location point for the feeler gauge. Crude grinding using a Demel would no doubt result in a variation in shell holder thickness that would resist additional grinding efforts to correct. Honing using ordinary abrasives would take too much time.

I hope this simple explanation helps.
 
So i dug into my box of cases and found some that had been shot 4 or 5 times and checked them and they were a bit longer than the once fired so i backed my die out and would size and then chamber(backed the die out). At first they were very hard to chamber so i kept backing the die down untill there was a little resitance and checked and the die will work without modification to the shell holder. I did read up about belted magnums and learned alot. I do like the feeler gauge idea i do have a couple of sets laying around. Thanks for the help guys. Some one mentioned redding has shell holder sets that are diffrent specs besides the standard .125"?
 
My gosh you guys sound like a bunch of hens in a coup.

Pity the poor guy who asked the original question, which was rather simple and an honest question. I guess this forum is not for sharing help, but rather a place to show off ones acumen at the reloading bench. I just remembered why I avoid this section of an otherwise helpful website. Carry on, but don't peck yerselves to death :rolleyes:
 
Stopp429 said:
So i dug into my box of cases and found some that had been shot 4 or 5 times and checked them and they were a bit longer than the once fired so i backed my die out and would size and then chamber(backed the die out). At first they were very hard to chamber so i kept backing the die down untill there was a little resitance and checked and the die will work without modification to the shell holder. I did read up about belted magnums and learned alot. I do like the feeler gauge idea i do have a couple of sets laying around. Thanks for the help guys. Some one mentioned redding has shell holder sets that are diffrent specs besides the standard .125"?
Click to expand...

Yes. Its called the Redding Competition shell holder set. It just takes the place of having to adjust your FL die for headspacing adjustments. If you were able to get your headspacing set where it chambers easily, there's really no need for them, especially in a hunting rifle. But you can usually find them on amazon or ebay if you want to give them a try.
 
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I can't see any of it since I hit ignore on him. Is he still going at it? Almost tempted to unignore, but I don't want to get back into the hen fight. I did enough pecking myself. Lol

Looks like a normal informative thread since I hit ignore :)
 
I have several ground down shell holders and selected ones are kept in the same box as my dies that use that shell holder. The Redding Competition Shell holder set having numerous pieces with varying heights or thicknesses would no doubt give more credibility to my crude home made grinding efforts. The Redding Competition Shell Holder set would probably have each piece labeled with finely polished surfaces that would give observers to my loading efforts a much higher regard to my loading efforts or product (ammo).
 
"How much is the doggy in the window"......
P72 said:
I have several ground down shell holders and selected ones are kept in the same box as my dies that use that shell holder. The Redding Competition Shell holder set having numerous pieces with varying heights or thicknesses would no doubt give more credibility to my crude home made grinding efforts. The Redding Competition Shell Holder set would probably have each piece labeled with finely polished surfaces that would give observers to my loading efforts a much higher regard to my loading efforts or product (ammo).
Click to expand...

While the Redding Competition Shell holder sets are all what you stated they are and work well for die adjustments UP. And since they are five piece sets in .002” increments (+.002”, +.004”. +.006”, +.008” and +.010”) above the standard deck height dimension of 0.125", they work well for making .002" adjustments UP to the dies.
The down side to them is if more sizing is needed then can be had from the standard dimension deck height, since they all are thicker, not thinner like is needed for those demands. To get the case into the die further (DOWN with the die) is where surface ground shell holders work well, since the deck height is lowered in the task. Myself, I have 0.010" taken off for a 0.115" final deck height, which permits me to get the dies DOWN on the case up to 0.010" more then from a standard height shell-holder and 0.012" more then the thinnest Redding Comp shell-holder. I use die shims to make my adjustments that give me the ability of 0.001" increments.
Wish Redding would offer minus (-) sets as well !.!.!
Donovan
 
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