Interesting little problem with lee dies

Boomer said:
If you are using all the tricks of the trade to prep your brass and then shooting the ammo in an "off the rack" gas gun, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed and will probably be convinced till the end of time that it's not worth the trouble. You have to load your ammo in a way that best suits your needs.

If you load for a bolt action bench gun, you want to neck size only and have minimum shoulder set back, just enough that you can close the bolt, to achieve maximum uniformity. This can be accomplished in two steps with a Redding Competition Die Set with a separate body die and Competition Shell Holders that allow you to adjust the set back by increments of .002" from .002" to .01". These shell holders fit the ram of your press very tightly, and I find I have to tap them in place with a brass drift. It can also be accomplished in a single pass with a custom cut die that is designed to neck size and set back the shoulder by a predetermined amount.

If you are loading for a hunting rifle or a gas gun, function trumps accuracy, so you should full length resize to ensure that the action of the rifle will function. Will your gas gun and hunting ammo be less accurate? Yes, but the looser tolerances in those rifles make them less accurate than your bolt action bench gun. It doesn't hurt to cull out the heaviest and the lightest cases when loading accurate hunting or gas gun ammo, but to pick through hundreds of cases to find 100 that are identical in weight is kind of pointless, as is with neck turning, weighing primers and measuring the depth that you seat them, attempting to weight powder to a tenth of a grain, or seating your bullets with a hand die.

As to the problem you have experienced with the Lee seating die, I have experienced similar problems with other makes of dies from time to time. I don't waste a lot of effort worrying about it if I can use a longer seater stem from another die set or simply put some temporary filler material inside the nose of the seating stem plug.
Click to expand...

Boomer, You always give great information, in easy to read and understand language, expressing a lot of experience. I sometimes also, write lengthy replies to some newcomer with a simple, to us, problem. However, I often wonder why I bother.
Almost never, does the person we are trying to help, by giving information based on many years of experience, ever acknowledge our help. The same is true of other very experienced people trying to help.
So many times I have seen another newby answer by saying he read something about that in a certain book, and the original writer will reply with something like, "Thanks for the information, I will get that book."
Just my thoughts and opinion.
 
I totally agree with boomer,you have to evaluate your application and reload accordingly. It would be foolish to spend all that time on reloading and then shoot those bullets thru a ar-15 as fast as you can pull the trigger.

I did listen to alot of you guys who have lots more loading expereince then me... I wanted to give it a try... making very precisie bullets and I followed alot of tips I saw here... about sorting case by weight... never did that before etc. I was going to load the bullets to the lands but I never did that before and I still dont feel comfortable doing it, because I dont know enough about whats going on.

So my bullets dont meet the 2.200" spec there a bit longer I guess after 21 posts we can come to the conclusion that this is as good as it gets for a set of lee dies... I will post up what lee says when I get a reply.

Dont get me wrong sometimes its hard to guage peoples tone and style on a forum but I am happy when anyone replys with anything helpful.
 
Last edited:
I know there is no problems loading 55 grain bullets and up because I used the dies to do so thousands of times. This problem could be only related to 50 and 40 grain vmax bullets due to the shape...for the people that had no issues with 35gr, 40gr, 50gr, what bullet and O.A.L are you using

My O.A.L for 50 V-max with the die bottemed out is 2.2445

This is directly from the lee site... and is what I am using
Dead Length Bullet Seating Explanation

The idea behind the floating bullet seater plug or "dead length bullet seating" is as follows; If you look inside the bullet seating die, you will see a restriction about 3/4 the way to the top of the die. This restriction is only .001 larger than bullet diameter, and is positioned so that when the bullet starts to seat into the case, the bearing surface will be passing through this restriction.

The bullet seater plug, being free to move axially, and due to the shape of the cavity will find the center of the nose, and a properly prepared case will find the center of the base of the bullet. The die should be turned in to touch the shell holder and is designed to be adjusted that way to eliminate clearance in the press for a more uniform bullet seating depth.

Most case/bullet alignment is determined in the resizing die. If the case neck is sized too small, the bullet will actually resize (open back up) the case neck when it is seated. If the case neck is thinner or softer on one side (and they usually are) the bullet will push out more on that side. Excessive crimp or an out of square case mouth can also cause bullet run out.
 
Last edited:
for example with 55 grain FMJ I can achive 2.1635 with the die bottemed out thats why I am thinking is has something to do with the 50 grain vmax and its shape.
 
msg.drew, I have a couple sets of the lee dies you speak of with the dead length bullet seater. The others with no problem getting oal shorter likely are using the regular die sets. Most people using the neck sizer/dead length seating die sets would be seating off the lands(freebore), and would be seating the bullet further out, therefore I think the range of adjustment on these dies would be tailored toward longer OAL. I don't own a hornady manual, but load info normally lists minimum OAL, to avoid overpressure with the listed recipe. My hodgdon info lists 2.210 COL, as I understand to be the minimum, for 223 with 50 gr bullets. So I think you're trying to seat to minimum OAL, which isn't necessary. You can go as long as you like, as long as the round feeds. Just trying to help. And for H4831 and Boomer, I think highly informative answers can overwhelm new loaders, who may have no idea what they mean, but they are greatly appreciated by a large number of us. Merry Christmas guys!
 
Stovepipe... I know what your saying... but if I was lee I would get the shortest bullet avalaible for the 223 and then make sure that if the mininum OAL was 2.200" I would make the die adjust past that to lets say 2.000" there should be some overtravel regardless if your going ot use it or not.

For example what if you wanted to load 35Grain V-max it would be impossible to meet the recomended OAL with these dies.

I am still waiting on lee to get back to me they are looking into it.
 
Could it be you are not screwing the seating die down enough. The instuctions for Lee are different than RCBS etc. I think most of the cost difference is in the exterior finish.Lees don't have any.
 
I've loaded several thousand 223 rounds with 55gr VMAX bullets to the saami recomended overall length with the same dies you have with nary a problem.
 
I've used a fair variety of reloading equipment brands over the years, many of which have already been mentioned. Overall the brand I've found that consistently has been most reliable and with the back up of customer service second to none is RCBS. Hands down, for me, they're "1st place".
 
I've had problems with RCBS,Lee,Hornady,and Redding.The very worst made die my buddy has ever had,was a Redding,a 7mmWSM F/L. Having said that,I recommend Reddings as they are both cheaper(in the States) and nicer finished than RCBS.
 
downwindtracker2 said:
I've had problems with RCBS,Lee,Hornady,and Redding.The very worst made die my buddy has ever had,was a Redding,a 7mmWSM F/L. Having said that,I recommend Reddings as they are both cheaper(in the States) and nicer finished than RCBS.
Click to expand...
Not long after I started into reloading, as part of a deal at a local gun show, I got a Redding balance scale, two sets of Redding dies and a set of Bonanza dies and the Bonanza I still have. I can't recall exactly what the problems were but after experiencing a number of issues with the Redding dies, I replaced them with a set of Lyman and a set of RCBS. Problem solved. For me anyway, the Redding were 'cheaper' alright, in more ways than one.:p And Lee dies.......... they've always reminded me of the Lada equivalent in the automotive world. They work, but there's better out there.;)
 
I have Redding, RCBS(carbide and competition) and use Lee crimp dies for revolvers, never had any issues with any of them in 25 yrs of reloading. That being said I am sure any of the manufacturers can have something slip through QC and have a bad die get to a end user, at that point its all about customer service.
 
Cummins4x4 said:
I have Redding, RCBS(carbide and competition) and use Lee crimp dies for revolvers, never had any issues with any of them in 25 yrs of reloading. That being said I am sure any of the manufacturers can have something slip through QC and have a bad die get to a end user, at that point its all about customer service.
Click to expand...
Yes, for the most part you're probably quite right and "six of one, half dozen of another" there's likely not all that much difference. I started in 'this' about '69 or '70 and after having problems with two of the 1st sets of dies, both being Redding, rather than tempt fate any more, I went with a different manufacturer. Recently, I had a minor problem with a new RCBS RC IV press. As fast as the mail service could deliver, that problem was corrected. In a quest for information from RCBS tech dept. concerning procedure and equipment to form 219 Donaldson Wasp brass from 30-30, once more, in addition to being very helpful, shipment of the required forming dies was nothing less than speedy. I agree with your point and as I've said previously, their customer service is second to none. It's probably that as much as anything that makes RCBS my #1 choice.
 
I started out reloading with hornady dies, and at first I thought it was just me being new that was causing problems, even though I was doing everything by the book. Finally realized they were junk,and got some RCBS.Problems solved. I bought some Lee's when I got different calibre's,and was pleasantly surprised. None have ever given me any issue. I use the Lee powder measure, case trimming sytem and have used their presses as well, and none have ever given any trouble. A friend of mine who was inexperienced tried to resize a case without lube, and got it very stuck! Lee took care of it, and quickly too. I decided to check my ammo,loaded with Lee, Rcbs and Hornady dies on my RCBS case comparator. Turns out the Lee's and Rcbs make equally straight ammo, while the Hornady is way worse. My buddies Redding dies in 300 RUM aren't as good as either the RCBS or Lee's. Just a small sample,obviously, but it works for me. Oh yeah, the Priming tool is great too, and the perfect powder measure is far superior to the Lyman I was using before.
 
I can't believe that a person would spend so much time doing case preparation,then would use an OAL listed in a manual.If it's worth the time doing the case prep,it's worth the time to measure the distance to the lands with a given bullet in your rifle,then try an OAL based on that measurement.
 
stubblejumper said:
I can't believe that a person would spend so much time doing case preparation,then would use an OAL listed in a manual.If it's worth the time doing the case prep,it's worth the time to measure the distance to the lands with a given bullet in your rifle,then try an OAL based on that measurement.
Click to expand...

The OAL is for hornady spec ammo and it has produced .4" .5" groups at 100 out of my rifle why would I want to mess around these are 50 grain bullets they might not be long enough to be seated to lands.

Only reason I did all that case prep is to see if they will produce those groups every time or if I just got lucky with those few tight groups before.

I matched the weight of the projectile to the rifleing of my gun and then loaded the bullets to spec that gave optimum Fps for maximum satability which works out to 3300fps
 
The OAL is for hornady spec ammo and it has produced .4" .5" groups at 100 out of my rifle why would I want to mess around these are 50 grain bullets they might not be long enough to be seated to lands.
Click to expand...

Then again they might produce even better accuracy if seated longer.Without trying,you will never know.If you spend that much time with case preparation,why not spend a little more experimenting with other seating depths?

I matched the weight of the projectile to the rifleing of my gun and then loaded the bullets to spec that gave optimum Fps for maximum satability which works out to 3300fps
Click to expand...

Then again you can't accurately calculate which loads will be the most accurate in a given rifle.It certainly would make load development simpler if it could be done consistently.Unfortunately,load development is not that simple.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom