Thanks everyone! So far the advice I have received here makes a heck of a lot more sense than the story I heard at the gunshop.
So, he wouldn't sell you dies? That's VERY ODD!
Well I was up there talking to him last week about buying a setup, and he suggested that I bring in 20pcs of brass, and for a nominal fee of $20 he'd show me how to set everything up and load 20rds to get a feel for it. Seems like $20 well spent. So yesterday I go back with brass, and get the runaround, "come back next week with your rifle."
That's not gonna happen the way I see it.
...any factory die set should be good. I'd say get a FL die, you can size just the neck with it, and you'll need to Full length resize eventually anyway. Even with a bolt, eventually the cases will be difficult to chamber.
That's what I thought!
Either the dealer is saying something outrageous, or he knows something important that maybe you don't. Is your rifle a standard factory chamber - or a custom chamber. Is it a K-Hornet or Ackley Improved?
Nope. Just a regular old .270win Tikka T3L S/S
Get a couple of reloading manual (Lyman / Sierra), read up, and load.
At his recommendation I did pick up a Lyman Reloading Manual 49th Edition.
All dies are made to the same specs and to have "custom" dies made as I beleive is "suggested" by the gunsmith, would be very costly and really not warranted.
Custom dies. Now there's a thought, but that's definitely not the case here.
Before I left the store I asked if he had the .270 dies in stock(Hornady). He only had 1 set left and put it aside for me. Suddenly the story about matching (or "setting up"??) factory Hornady dies to a particular rifle chamber didn't make sense. Warning bells going off...
Actually you do need to match dies to rifle - 30-06 dies for a 30-06 rifle, .270 win dies for a .270 rifle, etc.... maybe this is what the dealer was talking about??
Nope, just to clarify here's the story I was told.
"The chamber of any rifle, in this case .270win, is cut with a reamer. Over the course of cutting 30 rifle chambers the reamer gets dull and must be resharpened or replaced. Therefore, chamber #30 will be slightly smaller than chamber #1 which was cut when the reamer was new. The same happens at the die factory. If you use a die that was cut with a new reamer to size brass for a rifle that was chambered with a used reamer, the brass will be too big for that rifle and vice versa. This will cause catastrophic case head separation.
If we cheat a little to extend reamer life, we do that by resharpening the reamer larger so we get an extra 10 chambers out of it." ?????
He would not elaborate on the solution to this "problem."
Cheat on reamer life? Sounds sloppy to me!
I don't know what the size difference would be between a worn reamer and a new one. I would think a chamber would be milled to a tolerance of something like -.0010 +.0025, and, since the chamber is tapered, final size would be fine tuned by controlling the depth of the reamer?? None of which is relavant to me reloading my own ammo!
I dunno, maybe this guy gets 50 cycles out of his brass when most people only get 5, but his explanation just doesn't add up.
If prices at a smaller local store are somewhat competitive I will generally deal there as opposed to buying from a large corporation. Unfortunately, in this case I think I'll take my business elsewhere.
Thanks again all! Keep the comments coming...
