I use a mix of LEE and others, but I only buy LEE if I need a new set. I love the collet dies, especially for light rifle loading. I decap all my rifle brass with the little manual setup and a small hammer.
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I use a mix of LEE and others, but I only buy LEE if I need a new set. I love the collet dies, especially for light rifle loading. I decap all my rifle brass with the little manual setup and a small hammer.
For my precision rifles, I use Redding Competition micrometer dies. For hunting and informal shooting, I have (old) Lyman dies, RCBS, Hornady. I load 8x57JS with the latter, no real preference but it was the brand carried by the retailer I bought my 1st. 8 mm cases.
Pistol ammo is loaded with Dillon dies on my XL650.
I load quite a lot for 8 Mauser and use the Lee collet dies.
No issues at all.
Also the ammo is accurate and, what's most important, also extremely consistent.
If I had found the Lee classic reloader, I probably would have chosen that, but it does not exhist for 8 Mauser.
I have maybe a dozen different brands of dies and more than 100 sets.
I rate Forster the best, followed by RCBS and Redding more or less even depending on the type of seater that you buy. Many of the Forster die sets come with a superior BR seater. The Forster FL die is also very good.
The Redding Competition seaters are very good but very expensive and most unnecessary.
I have measured many FL die sizing chambers and the RCBS dies tend to be more accurately and uniformly dimensioned than other brands with the exception of maybe Forster.
All the other brands have no particular benefits. I buy all my die sets used and all are relatively cheap so the cost advantage of the Lee dies disappears.
Lyman dies tend to size to the minimum as do CH. Pacific Dies are sometimes too short and sometimes too long.
If you are happy with mediocre dies you can slam ammo together with any of them.
After the rod on a Lee die slipped for the second time, leaving the expander ball firmly in the case with the decapping pin protruding through the ignition hole, I did 2 things:Quote:
Originally Posted by cipherk98
1) Threaded the rod and fitted a good steel nut on the thread, like an RCBS die.
But the nut meant that the rod could not be set down far enough for proper decapping, so:
2) Removed the decapper pin from the sizing die and used a separate decapper ever since.
I'm satisfied with the Hornady custom grade dies in 8x57 JS I bought last year . I like the floating sleeve of the seating die. I already used Hornady's in .300 Win Mag, 7,5x55 SW, 6,5x55 SE.
I have a Lee set of 8x57 dies, and I've never had a problem what's so every. It's been seven years since I bought the Yugo M48 & the dies.
My Lyman 8x57 dies have worked fine for a decade so far. Then again, I am not feeding an MG-42.
My RCBS and Oz-made Simplex "Master" dies from over thirty years ago still work fine. The only FLS dies I have had to replace are for .308. They just wore out at the base of the neck region, from the sheer amount of brass run through them.
There are very few "really bad" die sets out there.
The separate decapping idea is good when dealing with heavily-crimped ex-mil brass, for the first time. Once you "process" the primer pockets (ONCE!), "normal" dies are fine.
See if you can get a de-priming spindle that has a Tungsten Carbide expander ball / plug. These are a revelation, as they pretty much eliminate the "squeal" and drag encountered with "hardened" steel expanders. Lyman make a range of them and they are available with different "adapter' plugs to suit the different threads in the top of various manufacturers' dies.