- Location
- Medicine Hat, AB
They have carbide dies for handgun cartridges, why not for rifle?
carbide dies
- Thread starter altagunguy
- Start date
Actually, they do. Dillon make carbide dies in .223 and in .308. I believe RCBS or Redding make one for the .30 Carbine.
Thing is, you still need case lube due to to the long bearing surface.
I've processed close to or more than 100K through my .223 Rem dies from Dillon, and haven't stuck a case yet using a very light spritzing with Dillon spray lube. It's actually amazing how little lube you can get away with using and it works well.
As for why it isn't more common, it's probably a function of cost vs use. Pistol calibers, people tend to load by the thousands. Most rifle reloaders might only load a thousand in the life of the die set. Is it worth it for them to spend $150 for a set of dies vs $60.
All things being equal, I think they are a good investment.
Thing is, you still need case lube due to to the long bearing surface.
I've processed close to or more than 100K through my .223 Rem dies from Dillon, and haven't stuck a case yet using a very light spritzing with Dillon spray lube. It's actually amazing how little lube you can get away with using and it works well.
As for why it isn't more common, it's probably a function of cost vs use. Pistol calibers, people tend to load by the thousands. Most rifle reloaders might only load a thousand in the life of the die set. Is it worth it for them to spend $150 for a set of dies vs $60.
All things being equal, I think they are a good investment.
The primary reason for using Carbide dies is to reduce wear and avoid lubrication. They are very useful for cartridges without a bottleneck but cannot be made to work with bottleneck cases without lube. They are made of a ring of carbide that the case is swaged through, the rest of the die is carbon steel in pistol calibers anyway, I have never examined rifle carbide sizers.
bigbull
bigbull
I think another thing is that pistol cases and .30 Carbine cases are straight-walled whereas most rifle cases have a bit of taper to them, so you can't just run a rifle case through a ring of carbide like you can with a pistol case. Until someone figures out a way to full-length size without lubrication, we'll always have Lee collet dies to fall back on.
