Has anyone had one made up as a custom service from Lee? I've made the enquiry and was surprised that they are required to use a 1 1/2"x14 thread for the die body?

Any thoughts why?
Cheers...
Con

Con, I'm not sure if you've ever used the Lee FCDs but as the crimpimg collet is a full length sleeve inside the die so all the force from the loading press stroke is transfered direct to the crimp rather than thru the shell case, it removes a fair bit of metal from inside the die body. With a largish diameter case like the 416 Rigby,even if it was physically possible to do it in a 7/8 x 14 die size it would leave it very thin walled & so Lee insist on using their big diameter dies, such as they use for 50BMG. It does make them a bit spendy. Time was, back in the days when 416 Rigby was a purely custom affair, some die manufacturers would only make them in big diameter dies, I think RCBS/Huntingdon were like this & after pricing some up, I had Peter Davern make me some in 7/8x14. Everyone does it now for FL & Seating dies but its a step too far for the FCDs.
Steve.

If you want to save yourself some $$ just order a seater die body from Lyman or one of the other die manufacturers and use it as a separate crimp die. Since I don't load many 416 Rigby's, I just seat and crimp in two separate operations using my seater die. Set it to seat without crimping then back off the seater stem and adjust the die to crimp without seating the bullet any deeper in the case. Works fine for me.