broke my neck sizing Die

Lee quality leaves alot to be desired. But they do work very well when used properly. The problem was you probably had it dialed down too far and the camming action of the superior press destroyed the die. Too much force due to mechanical advantage of a cam. Just send it back and when you get your new one try a brass in the holder and check it each time with a caliper.
RCBS would be smart to copy lees design but change it enough to not warrant a law suit.
 
I wrote an email to LEE Precisions, with pictures and a short explaination of what happened. They wrote back asking for my address and what calibre the die was, and said they would be shipping me a new neck sizing die in the mail.

I didn't even have to send the broken one back. Now thats some good customer support!
 
zedex said:
Lee quality leaves alot to be desired. But they do work very well when used properly. The problem was you probably had it dialed down too far and the camming action of the superior press destroyed the die. Too much force due to mechanical advantage of a cam. Just send it back and when you get your new one try a brass in the holder and check it each time with a caliper.
RCBS would be smart to copy lees design but change it enough to not warrant a law suit.
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The Lee design is still under patent then, I take it....?

N_R
 
The outer part of the lee neck die is aluminum. Not an ideal metal. Aluminum doesnt stretch or flex like steel. It just breaks. Dont know if lee has a patent on that die but they most likely do. Its a great design just the quality of components is poor.
 
I use a lot of the collet dies with my Forster press. This press is so powerful that it is very easy to at the very least abuse the die and mushroom some of the internal parts.

Best way to set up is to slowly screw the die down and measure the neck each time you run it into the die. Once the neck no longer gets any smaller it is time to stop screwing down and maybe even back it off a bit, measuring cases until they get bigger this time. Eventually you will be doing all the die is capable of without over stressing anything. If you want the neck a bit smaller you can spin the mandrel in a drill and make it a bit smaller with fine paper etc..
 
fogducker said:
why is always lee stuff that seems to be the one that breaks ?is this all just by chance?:eek:
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If that was really the case we wouldn't have all the green/blue/red paint junkies bragging about how well they were treated when their (insert more expensive brand name here) green products broke. :slap: :p
 
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