Originally Posted by
Mauser308
Not the seater die, its the bloody Hornady full length sizer dies. Initially I was suspecting an almost full length jammed case and needing to get the case extractor out to sort me problem out, but never actually ended up jamming a case in the die. I took everything apart, cleaned and measured the lot suspecting I had an incorrect part in the works or an expander ball in the wrong place jamming the case, but no. It's both on the resize stroke and the extraction of the case where normally you are just pulling the neck over the expander ball. I tried a case with no expander stem or primer pin in place, no change so it is some weirdity with the die body. Air relief is clear, die is spotlessly clean and case is appropriately lubed shoulder and neck. Expander ball is set up in the right position so no jam up but for some random reason the down stroke requires more horse power than any other die I've used as well. This is to the point that some cases are at the strength limit of the press so that they aren't resizing the case enough to fit into the chamber. This is with .308win, and trying to get once-fired back into a SAAMI-minimum sporting chamber... Milsurp cases - forget it with the Hornady dies just requires too much horsepower to resize fully. Redding bushing die - up down job done no pressure needed the difference is extremely obvious.
It's weird - easiest answer is use another brand of die. Hence going to Redding competition dies, which just work screw in set height and size cases.
And those Lee dies, hmmmmm - good for a case stuck in the chamber in my experience - .22Hornet in a ZKW465 once fired and collect die every time pop out with the cleaning rod. Full length die no issue...
The bushing sizing dies by comparison caliber for caliber, I'm getting under 1thou runout and in most cases less than 1/4thou which is really the limit of my ability to measure things with the flex in the setup as you rotate the case, so as good as the collet die or better and total control of the process. I'm using the full length bushing die with a set of competition shellholders so total control of all dimensions with simple part changes once set. Sizing is mostly neck only with the die set to bump the should only as needed - the only additional steps I have are separate depriming and primer seating (i dropped the deprimer stem out of the die which removes most of the issues). The only other sizing related problem that I have found once is a fat case head.
The bonus with this setup is the fact that without the bushing in you have a fully effective body die and in the odd time you get a case that doesn't resize properly and won't chamber strip the bushing die and can tap the shoulder back on a loaded round. Just done this on a couple of rounds loaded for another rifle - I know what the load is but the cases were sized for an older rifle that's now gone and were too long to fit a SAAMI-minimum chamber. Easy fixed with a body die - which I just happened to have haha.