I only have one set of hornaday dies , but the seater is junk. This thing has no support of the neck or body in the least, and the sleeve doesnt even support half the length of the neck. Their seater is capable of produceing major run out and bent necks. Might as well just eliminate the die body and sleeve and just have the seating stem dangling from your press.

call hornady and tell them ..
i like their dies, and the custom grade stuff rocks .

I use them for the 40s&w and the 308 and have no problems with them doing their job.
Maybe just a bad set,Send them a call and they should take care of you.

quote:

call hornady and tell them ..

I know certain people have.

I will call them and see if they have a different sleeve they may have made.

If their seaters for other calibers are like this one the seaters just suck. The full length die is ok for sizeing, except the locking bolt/nut is a engineering brain fart

hit ext 208, talk to lonnie

I have the Creedmoor dies in their supposed "best" config.

They totally suck.

The seater is as you have described. The sizer sizes WAY too much for my preference neck tension wise.

My gunsmith made a custom seater and bushing sizer from Redding competition dies.

I called and talked to Doug , I asked about a sleeve that is reamed deeper so the whole neck, shoulder and top part of the body goes up in side the sleeve and gets supported, rather than only half of the length of the neck.

By the way this is 9.3x57 dies. I get big time run out on some cases

Just saw your post, maybe I should call back and talked to Lonnie

Take the sleeve out of your hornaday seater and put it on your particular caliber case. Mine the sleeve only goes over .230" of the length of the neck only, thats it.

I use them for several of my wildcats. I've never had a bad issue with them.

I seated a couple of bullets with mine that totally crushed the case neck with the bullet and pushed it down into the body!

Seater problems with mine too. Had to disassemble and reshape where the tip of bullets meets up for seating. Maybe that's why my 257 Bob shot so bad when using them.

Also the stem oof the sizer die kept slipping. Any brand but Hornady for me. They need to stick to the mfg. of their bullets which I like just fine.

Their dies are Good for trotline weights only. Merg

The more I use them the more they become my first choice when I am looking for a new set.

Had problems when first using them and then read the instructions about how to tighten them and all issues went away.

I use Hornady pistol dies, but I like Forster rifle dies better. My 8x57 hornady seater engages almost all of the neck very well. The Forster engages neck, shoulder and a good chunk of the body. Redding competition seater is similar, except the Redding does not give you the option of omitting the micrometer and saving some $$.

You may have just gotten a die with the wrong sleeve installed.

Andy

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My 8x57 hornady seater engages almost all of the neck very well.

My 9.3x57 sleeve surely doesnt.
I examined the stem and compared it to a RCBS 9.3x62 seater stem. This hornaday stem is way smaller inside and could be for a .25 cal

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I only have one set of hornaday dies , but the seater is junk. This thing has no support of the neck or body in the least, and the sleeve doesnt even support half the length of the neck.

I'm no great fan of the Hornady dies but, goodness, they ain't junk!

The seater really doesn't need to "support" the necks. All that's needed is to support the case mouth, holding it in alignment with the base of the bullet; Hornacdy's sleeve does that pretty well. It's certainly better than conventional seaters which often don't support or align anything, especially when loading longer bullets.

MOST FL dies produce undersized case mouths, many people seem to like the idea of "high bullet tension." It's actually a bad idea, real bullet tension will never be more than about 1 to 1.5 thou less than bullet diameter. Any greater "tension" leads to excessive run-out or necks being shoulved into the body, especially if the loader didn't chamfer the case mouths very well.

quote:

what do you think of Hornaday dies?

I no longer have any Hornady dies (except for straight walled pistol) in the house....

I'm sure happy with RCBS, Redding, Lyman and a few Herters!

quote:

Originally posted by JD Miller:

quote:

My 8x57 hornady seater engages almost all of the neck very well.

My 9.3x57 sleeve surely doesnt.
I examined the stem and compared it to a RCBS 9.3x62 seater stem. This hornaday stem is way smaller inside and could be for a .25 cal

If the seater plug does not fit closely in the top of the sleeve, then either the sleeve or the plug or both are not correct for the cartridge. Call Hornady.

Andy

quote:

Originally posted by rcamuglia:
I seated a couple of bullets with mine that totally crushed the case neck with the bullet and pushed it down into the body!

I had the same problem with my Hornady 7x65 dies. RCBS seating die sovled the problem.

I have over a dozen Hornady sets and have never had a problem. I use their seater dies as my first preference in a progressive press as it gives extra support while I get my fingers out of the way.

I also use them for short rifle cases and have no problem at all with runout when properly set up.

For long cases I use Forster.

I have not had any problem with the Hornady sizer either with no slippage ever of the decapping stem and all my dies predate the new style stem.

I use and have dozens of other dies of just about all brands and the only brand I won't buy now is RCBS in their standard dies.

"what do you think of Hornaday dies?"

I try not to.

The last set I bought were for .45 Colt pistol..."Long Colt", NOT ACP.

When I tried to use the seating die, I found it was apparently NOT adjustable for seating depth of the bullets. No matter how far out I turned the seater stem, the die would still cram the bullets into the case so far they would almost disappear.

I finally figured out that it would not accept ANY bullet larger than .451" diameter. The bottom of the floating bullet/case-neck guide (or whatever they call it) was cramming the bullets into the cases, without allowing them to properly enter the die to where they could even touch the seater.

I called Hornady. Their "expert" told me I shouldn't be trying to load .454" diameter bullets anyway! According to him, no .45 Colt (.45 "Long Colt", we're talking here) had ever been made to take bullets larger than .451" and that my bullets were wrong, not their die. He refused to even consider a request for a larger diameter "guide".

So, after I gave up on talking with him, I "gently" threw the Hornady dies in a corner of a cabinet and bought a new set of RCBS .45 colt dies. The RCBS function perfectly with my .454" bullets, and without even having a "miracle" new gimmick like a floating case-neck/bullet guide.

Maybe someone at Hornady could get a clue about what the dimensions of bullets for the older .45 Long Colt guns actually were for many years...or they could try listening to their customers.

I have been very careful not to buy another set of Hornady "New Dimension" dies. Now I stick with RCBS or Lyman (even Lee) all of which have worked for me first time, every time.

I like Hornady bullets & brass, but dies? No thanks. I don't have enough cabinet corners to throw new, unusable stuff into until I have wasted all my meagre means.

I found that my hornaday expander/spindle/rod is not centered in the die (bent necks). Called hornaday to ask if their "self centering spindle" from there Match grade die would fit my standard die, "Nope", and you cant just leave a locking nut loose like on Redding or RCBS so the expander "floats". You got a "zip spindle" with barely any thread on the rod and you have to lock the expander rod tight with that drill chuck looking piece of crap thingy!
Ive wasted enough time with it.

I probably have 8 sets of hornady dies. Except for the fact that some of them sqeaze the neck down alot and then expand it I am very happy with them.
I've found with almost any die I have to fiddle a bit with the expander stem to get it centered. Once centerd normal fl dies can make phenominally low runnout. Most of my hornady dies outperform my rcbs and even redding after some tuning. My recomendation is to try resetting the position of the spindle several times until it winds up in the center of the die. LASTLY you can't beat the eliptical expander....it especially works great for smoothing necks on virgin brass with just a tiny bit of lube on the case mouth.

quote:

Originally posted by Alberta Canuck:
I called Hornady. Their "expert" told me I shouldn't be trying to load .454" diameter bullets anyway! According to him, no .45 Colt (.45 "Long Colt", we're talking here) had ever been made to take bullets larger than .451" and that my bullets were wrong, not their die.

I don't own any Hornady products except their bullets and case annealing kit.

I'm wondering if they could be economizing, and using some of the same components for both the 45 Colt as the 45ACP? Still no excuse for their customer service dude being so surly.

I have 1 set ! and that's the last set I will ever buy !

Quote from the linked article: (http://riflemansjournal.blogsp...ting-die-runout.html) "We'll check the runout at the bullet ogive of cartridges loaded with five different seating dies: RCBS, Hornady, Redding, Vickerman and Wilson."

That author has carefully compiled an interesting collection of useless data. "Checking" a single sample of anything doesn't mean anything, that's like testing for accuracy with one bullet from each brand to see which hits closer to the center.

The Hornady 45 colt, 454 casul and 45 acp seating dies are the same part number.

They work well for both cartridges for me, but the taper/roll crimp is easier to set for a roll crimp than for a taper crimp.

Andy