Help on dies which to buy

[goosebrown]

I got a lot of info here on loading 204 and the best advice was the seating depth. I bought and use a hornady bullet comparitor on the loaded shells and what I get is a pretty wide variation. I think that the ogive of the bullets is inconsistent. That means that my Hornady dies for seating seat on the bullet right at the tip so they push that part of the bullet to the right depth, but if the bullet is pointier than another it seats higher. (Barnes Varmint Grenades)

Are there not dies that use a collet that seat the bullet by pressing the part of the bullet that is supposed to hit the lands? That way the loads would be more consistent because what is above that point really doesn't matter all that much compared to that exact spot on the bullet that would hit the throat of the chamber. In effect I want my dies to seat the bullet to where the comparitor measures them.

Also anyone have thoughts on 308 dies? I want the best that I can get for under or around $100 and there are a load of them now.

[acloco]

You are actually having an issue with the seating stem of the die.

In some cases, you need to open up (drill) the center of the seating stem so that the contact point is NOT on or near the plastic tips, but on the ogive of the bullet. This is especially true for bullets that are long for caliber such as 75/80 gr 22 caliber AMax and 140 gr AMax in 264/6.5.

My preferred brand of rifle dies is Redding. Next would be Hornady or Forster.

Blacken a bullet with a black sharpie and seat in an empty shell to determine where your seating stem is actually contacting the bullet.

When switching brands or styles of bullets, you will need to adjust your seating depth when reloading.

[Wrangler John]

Varmint Grenades are notorious for OAL variation, yet they are usually spot on when seated by the ogive. I use Redding dies and an new RCBS Competition Seater die P/N 39438. The RCBS die makes loading the smallish .204 bullets easier for my numb hands as they drop into a sliding sleeve through a window in the side of the die for axial seating.

Acloco is correct, it's a seating stem problem. I usually have to polish the seating cavity with a felt bob, emery polishing compound and Dremel Tool to prevent marking the jackets with a line. You can relieve the stem yourself, or return the die with a few bullets and the manufacturer will correct it. I also sometimes have to hand ream a stem lightly with a carbide 11 degree case neck chamfering tool (Sinclair) before polishing it to remove the sharp edge that marks jackets (I have a separate tool just for that purpose).

As for dies, when I have a problem with Redding, RCBS or the others I turn to Forester dies. They have a wide variety of precision dies including a neck bushing shoulder bump die that works wonders. My Redding FL size die won't reduce the base of .204 Ruger cases fired in one barrel, so they will fit another barrel, but the Forester die does, just a matter of .001" but all the difference in the world. Forester is a good alternative when the others don't work.

[goosebrown]

That is exactly what I wanted to know. I never thought of the chamfering of the seater itself. I might get an additional collar and then try to get that a little larger to move the contact down the ogive from the top. It is hitting right at the tip as there is a mark there right at the top on every cartridge.

[bow shot]

Goose, I'm using a Wilson seater after using Hornady, RCBS and Lee. But I still get a little circumscribe where the pusher shoves on the bullet (Hornady Vmaxes and Sierra blitzkings). I do get excellent consistency for length and concentricity though.

[Fred_C_Dobbs]

The setup I've gone to on everything I load is a Lee collet neck die and a Redding body die. The Lee collet die gives about 90% of the results of neck turning in terms of neck tension and concentricity at about 10% of the effort. Plus, it prolongs case live compared to FLS.

I load a bullet that's very inconsistent base to ogive, too, but they're 100-gr Nosler Partitions in .243. What I do with them is sort them into groups to the nearest 0.005" and load the each group separately. I load them with identical jump, which means each group gets a different shank seating depth.

In a typical box of bullets, that usually comes to three groups, which means three shank seating depths. Ordinarily, changing seating depth would mean different starting pressures so I compensate by reducing the charge a tenth of a grain at each 0.005" deeper seating depth. Then I test for MV. I figure that if the MVs are reasonably close, they should shoot about the same (but I still try to shoot the groups separately).

It seems to work with the .243 but changing charge by a tenth of a grain is likely to have more dramatic results on a .204. Maybe if you just sorted the bullets, then loaded and shot them separately, re-zeroing to the new point of impact when you switch to a different batch?

[bigcatdaddy]

Possible thread drift here if you allow...

Please comment on this statement I've read recently

"...bullet seating depth in .204 is less critical, with most chambers having long throats..." I guess the implication is that many reloaders will not be able to get their ogive close enough to the lands.

any truth to that?

[Wrangler John]

Possible thread drift here if you allow...

Please comment on this statement I've read recently

"...bullet seating depth in .204 is less critical, with most chambers having long throats..." I guess the implication is that many reloaders will not be able to get their ogive close enough to the lands.

any truth to that?

Well, it may be true, but then I have found that most bullets (there may be exceptions) shoot best when seated well off the lands. I experimented with several bullets in two different barrels and found that most bullets shot best when seated to the bullet manufacturer's recommendation (Barnes and Berger, same with Hornady). When seated close to the lands groups opened up. Why? No idea, but it doesn't matter if the groups shrink when they are seated .020" or deeper off the lands!

[bigcatdaddy]

thx for the reply Joe.

My .204 build is ready for the range. Compared to pistol reloading, all of a sudden, rifle reloading for accuracy has become alot more intimidating. Many more variables to control.

My approach as a novice will be to start with factory loads and see what she likes. Plan on using that once-fired brass. Guess I'll start with some Varget. I decided to pickup a Redding die set after reading this site for a couple weeks.

Too many variables for me to get my head around at first.

[Fred_C_Dobbs]

"...bullet seating depth in .204 is less critical, with most chambers having long throats..."

I am dubious.

For starters, I know from the measurements I've taken, I should be able to load what I think is the shortest bullet on the market (26-gr Barnes) to a shank depth equal to the bullet's diameter and still seat 0.007" into the lands in my Savage .204. Presuming my Savage's chamber is typical, this claim would not hold true for Savages in general.

Second, the theory itself sounds fishy. The fact that the chamber has a long throat will not magically cause the bullet to be more tolerant of jump. The reason barrels get "shot out" is because the lands adjacent to the throat get eroded down to the bore, effectively increasing the length of the throat. An unnecessarily long throat hastens the demise of your barrel.

Third, I can't imagine why barrel makers would do this. I don't see any benefit but there's a potentially huge downside. They're staking the accuracy of their product the tolerance to jump of someone else's product. So what about those bullets that are less tolerant of jump? They're being doomed to inaccuracy.

Conceivably they could do it to allow shooters using the longer, heavier bullets to seat long and have more case volume remaining but that scenario takes some stretch of the imagination. There might be some rational reason for it but I can't figure what it might be.

[jo191145]

Fred

Just cause I'm bored

Bearing length on a 26 Barnes is .277

BL of a 40 Berger= .175

35 Berger= .227
30 Berger= .217
39bk= .255

Its been so long since I used a .20 cal comparator I could'nt find it
I used a sized case and math (never my strong suit )
Everyones BL readings may differ than mine but the 26 Barnes is one of the longest BL lengths you''ll be using in a 12 twist.

Right or wrong Roy Weatherby is generally attributed to inventing the long throat in modern sporting rifles.
It was an easy way for him to produce his line of Weatherby magnums that increased velocity over conventional cartridges.
Long throat reduces start pressure allowing more powder and subsequently higher velocities.

Hornady/ Ruger chose that route with the 204R. Helped them ramp up the velocity as a marketing tool.
Also keeps reloaders from getting into serious trouble with a small bore cartridge.
With those little bullets jammed into the lands pressures can spike very rapidly as you go up the charge scale.
The large jump reduces that effect greatly. Call it marketing, call it laywering.
It still works.
Loading for a long jump is just different. Neck tension and its variations are more crucial.
Neck tension in effect becomes the lands.

My first Savage tube was a real hummer IMO. Over 4000 rds before it was toast. Never once switched my OAL length to chase the lands.
The real reason it stopped shooting was alligatoring. It turned copper jackets to plasma.

[Silverfox]

goosebrown--The suggestions about the bullet tip bottoming out in your seating stem are spot on. Another thing I have found that causes seating depths to vary is neck tension. I use an RCBS Rockchucker press for most of my bullet seating so I have lots of torque available, but I can still "feel" the difference when a bullet seats real easy or takes lots of pressure to seat. Some of the differences in the pressure it takes to seat a bullet may be due to case hardening. But, when I can feel a bullet is harder to seat I take out my Stoney Point comparator and gauge and measure from the base of the casing to the ogive and that distance is usually quite a few thousandths longer than for those bullets that seat with what I think is "normal" seating pressure.

I also have some calibers I use a Wilson seating die for in my arbor press and you can feel the seating pressure difference with those seating dies too. I'm not sure, but I think the mouth of the seating stem on the Wilson dies I have will splay or bell out if it takes too much pressure to seat the bullet and the mouth of the stem is then kind of peramanently belled out and your seating depth won't be what you want. Some folks will get the "bell" effect ironed back to normal by rolling the mouth of the seating stem between to flat pieces of metal and then they use plastic steel or some product like that to fill in the seating stem mouth and then drill it out to fit their needs. I've never done the plastic steel trick, but I guess it works pretty good.

[Fred_C_Dobbs]

jo191145, I guess the 26-gr Barnes was a bad example. With the 32-gr Nosler (my go-to bullet), I hit the lands with a seating depth of just 0.026". So I still can touch the lands, I just can't do it with one diameter's shank seating depth.

I'd forgotten about the long throated Weatherbys. I've read remarks by Gale McMillan that it's possible to shoot out the lands in a magnum rifle -- which I reckon pretty much includes any Weatherby caliber -- an inch or more up the bore before accuracy is degraded enough that you'd notice it while shooting offhand. From a bench, maybe, but not offhand. But since he was referring specifically to magnums, I hadn't expected it to also hold true for a poodle-shooter like the .204.

[FireBallGuy]

I use the redding type S match die set and will NEVER use any other die set again....PERIOD!!!

[RAMOS]

I went from Hornaday Custom Grade dies to Redding Comp. Type S dies myself. Huge improvement in my opinion.