Help with oversize .243 lee die

woodenpigeon

woodenpigeon

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Has anyone else ever bought a new die that seems to be too big? I bought new set of lee dies in the yellow box that has f/l, neck sizer, and seating die. I loaded up 40 tonight and then tried to chamber one and I could barley close the bolt on my tikka t3 .243. Tried some other rounds and there were some that there is no way the bolt is going to close with. The brass was once fired by someone else, so I full length sized them, used the lee case gauge and cutter to trim to the right length and chamfered the neck and cleaned the primer pocket. Loaded rounds and now this. I measured the brass and these vs a new factory federal round are 5 thousandths too big near the bottom of the case and 2 thousandths larger just before the neck. I pulled the bullet, and double checked that I had screwed the die in far enough so that the shell holder was hitting the bottom of the die and then tried with no luck to close the bolt on the empty case. Am I not seeing something here or is this die just too big?
 
Add 1/8 turn of preload after the die makes contact with the shell holder. In some cases even that doesn't work if the cases were fired in a different chamber.
 
I wondered that too, so I went 1/8,then 1/4 turn, then half turn and still a no go. The shell holder was making enough contact with the bottom of the die that the handle wasn't going all the way down on the press. The factory round goes in the chamber no problem and the 100 rounds I made the other day work fine. Those brass I bought new, fired once and then full length resized and trimmed and they all chamber no problem. It has to be the die is too big doesn't it?
 
The chamber on your rifle and the sizing die are made to a set of tolerances. Likely your T3, like most of them has the chamber reamed on the small side of the specifications. The die, is likely reamed to the maximum tolerance.

If your brass is hard, it may need to be annealed. It might just be springing back after swaging. This happens with high pressure cartridges fairly often.

With that Tikka chamber, you may need a set of small base dies.
 
bearhunter said:
The chamber on your rifle and the sizing die are made to a set of tolerances. Likely your T3, like most of them has the chamber reamed on the small side of the specifications. The die, is likely reamed to the maximum tolerance.

If your brass is hard, it may need to be annealed. It might just be springing back after swaging. This happens with high pressure cartridges fairly often.

With that Tikka chamber, you may need a set of small base dies.
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Makes sense. I'm going to borrow my fathers .243 f/l size die and see if it does the trick first and if not I'll search for the small base dies you mentioned. Thanks.
 
You have two possible problems.

1. The brass was fired in another rifle that may have a had a slightly larger diameter and a longer headspace setting. So remember even after full length resizing the brass will try and spring back to its fired size after sizing.

2. Do as stated above and screw the die down further until the press cams over and see if these resized cases fit in your chamber "without" any closing force with the bolt.

3. If the cases still require "any" bolt force to close then try counting to 3 or 4 seconds with the ram at the top of its stroke. This will let the brass know who is the boss and the case will spring back less after being removed from the die.

4. If these steps fail try another shell holder.

5. If this doesn't change anything then lap the top of the shell holder on a piece of glass with fine wet and dry sand paper. Wet the top of the glass so the sand paper sticks to the glass and apply some oil to the top of the sand paper. Adding the oil allows the the piece being lapped to float on a thin film of oil and keep things even. Try to remove no more than .002 from the top of the shell holder and resize more cases. By lapping the top of the shell holder you are raising the deck height of the shell holder and pushing the case further into the die.

We live in a plus and minus manufacturing world and you may have a long die and a tall shell holder, meaning a die and shell holder on the "plus" side of tolerances.

The BIG problem you are having is sizing brass fired in another rifle, so remember the die and shell holder may be OK and you might be dealing with just brass spring back. When I buy once fired brass for my AR15 rifles, I use a small base die and count to 4 before lowering the ram. If the brass was fired in a machine gun with a even larger diameter chamber and longer headspace settings I may have to size the cases several times before forcing the brass back to minimum dimensions.

You also may need a good case gauge to measure the fired case before and after sizing.

Below a .223/5.56 fired case before resizing, and why the Hornady gauge is better than a Wilson type case gauge. A fired case will "fit" inside the Hornady gauge and may not drop all the way in the Wilson type gauge.

headspacegauge005_zps20685e73.jpg


And the same case after sizing and .003 shorter.

headspacegauge004_zps4465b7bc.jpg


Now study the drawing below and the blue, red and green dotted lines, and note when you full length resize a case it is possible to the actually make the case "LONGER" than its fired length. And you want your cases a few thousandths shorter or below the red dotted line.

shouldersetback_zps59bf1b04.jpg
 
billdick said:
You could buy rcbs dies or do like I had to once and put your die in the vice in your shop and take the side grinder and grind some of the base off.
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Please don't take this the wrong way but lapping a shell holder if anything goes wrong is far cheaper to replace than the grinding the bottom off the die. Removing material from the bottom of the die is best done with lathe and with proper measuring equipment to keep things straight and true.

I also say this because I use Redding competition shell holders and want my dies making hard contact with the shell holder and the press reaching cam over.
 
I had the very same problem using once fired brass from an unknown source. The bolt was tight to close on my 243 win model 70. I also had lee dies. I decided that I would only buy new ammo and fire that off then reload those cases, or buy new brass to reload for it.
 
bigedp51 said:
Please don't take this the wrong way but lapping a shell holder if anything goes wrong is far cheaper to replace than the grinding the bottom off the die. Removing material from the bottom of the die is best done with lathe and with proper measuring equipment to keep things straight and true.

I also say this because I use Redding competition shell holders and want my dies making hard contact with the shell holder and the press reaching cam over.
Click to expand...

I agree 100%. Perhaps it's the fact that I hold a millwright ticket, but I would never resort to using a side grinder on a sizing die.
 
Had same problem reloading for a new Xbolt 243. I use FL RCBS dies and case would not fit or was way too tight. The problem was solved when I switched the Lyman shell holder with a RCBS shell holder. RCBS shell holder pushed case into die a little farther. Never had this problem with any other 243 I loaded using Lyman shell holder with my FL RCBS dies..
Even with the Lyman FL dies and Lyman shell holder the cases would not fit the Xbolt?
 
Over 46 years ago a machinist at work took .003 of the top of a shell holder for me to cure the same problem. You can't bump or setback the shoulder of the case if it isn't shoved far enough into the die.
 
You don't have to buy anything you have the tools for the job. I've come across a few times the answer is always the same, as suggested by bigepd51 the case has to go further into the die, that is accomplished by shortening the die or the shell holder. I would shorten the die 0.020.
Enjoy
 
I had a similar problem with a 257 bob. Try this, when you run the case all the way into the die, partially retract the case, turn it 90 degrees and then run it in again and then extract. See if it will chamber. It worked for me but it was too much fiddling around.

I opted to go after the shell holder, the cheaper one of the holder/die combo. I put the holder into a lathe and cut .010 from the top. I do not bottom the die on the holder but turned the die down a bit at a time until the case would chamber with just once through the die.

Edit; I went back and reread the posts here and there is some good advice. Try a different brand of shell holder, try shortening one maybe. The small base dies are a good idea, but since your regular dies work with your own brass, try borrowing a set from some one, it is a one time thing. Consider how much you have into this used brass, maybe you could pass this brass on to some one else and buy new.
 
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Buy a Redding body die. You can run your reloaded rounds into the body die without a problem. It will save a lot of time pulling bullets and starting all over again when you have a little reloading hiccups.
 
Update. After trying another set of dies and still having the same issue, I switched out the #2 shell holder that came with the die set with the #2 from my universal shell holder set and to my surprise the problem was solved. Measured with the mic to see what the difference was and the shell holder that came with the die set is 4/1000" thicker than the one that came in the universal shell holder set.
 
maynard said:
Buy a Redding body die. You can run your reloaded rounds into the body die without a problem. It will save a lot of time pulling bullets and starting all over again when you have a little reloading hiccups.
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I pulled the mandrel and decapping pin out of the full length die and resized the rest of the loaded rounds and checked each one in the rifle. All good now with the thinner #2 shell holder.
 
woodenpigeon said:
I pulled the mandrel and decapping pin out of the full length die and resized the rest of the loaded rounds and checked each one in the rifle. All good now with the thinner #2 shell holder.
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So you squeezed the bullet tighter with the resizing die? Redding body dies do not touch the bullet and only resizes the body and bumps the should back a couple thousands.
 
maynard said:
So you squeezed the bullet tighter with the resizing die? Redding body dies do not touch the bullet and only resizes the body and bumps the should back a couple thousands.
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People on here just can't seem to see the difference between a body die and taking the centre out of their standard sizing die and running loaded ammo through it.
I gave up trying to explain it.
In the 1970s I got a RCBS trim die for a 243, the type you put the case in and file off whatever sticks out. It is actually a body die, because the throat will take the loaded cartridge without squeezing it, with normal thickness brass necks.
If any loaded 243 ammo won't go easily into the rifle, they get a trip through this die and the problem is gone. Of course, this won't help if the bullet is seated too far out, but it certainly trues the brass up.
 
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