I’ve decided that any new dies I get will be the neck bushing type for eliminating the need for the expander button and improved case neck to body concentricity. But I’ve got almost 40 years worth of conventional dies. Mostly RCBS with Lee, Redding, and Bonanza thrown in.

Does anyone modify conventional dies by reaming the die neck to work with a particular brass neck thickness without an expander button? I’d like to be able to send all of my sizer dies to someone to check them for neck/body concentricity and ream the necks of the concentric ones to work with a supplied sample brass case?

www.benchrest.com

Look for an advertiser "JLC Precision".

Redding & RCBS will make standard type custom dies if you send them 3 fired brass, but you will still need the expander. They may modify your dies you now have also. Bushings work best with neck turned brass, but will work with unturned when loading a boatail bullet. The bullet becomes the expander.

Outside neck turning would add another possibility, change the case - not the die.

IOW you can turn the thickness of the neck so that you can use your die without the expander and get whatever bullet grip you want.

You should outside turn the necks of most brass before sizing with a bushing die anyway since bushing dies push all the neck thickness variations to the inside of the neck. Outside turning would help minimize those variations.

If you change the die then it may not work as well on the next lot of brass which might have a different neck thickness.

Honing the inside neck of a FL die to be able to size without an expander button is my favourite die setup. I know Forster offers this service for their own dies (+Bonanza?) for all of 10$ plus shipping. Maybe RCBS and Redding offer this service as well?? A call to their Customers Service Dept, perhaps?

The bushing type dies are very flexible when it comes to adjust neck tension - although bushings inevitably seem to pile up. I find a fixed, inside honed FL die gives me less runout than the bushing dies do, though. Drawback: you often have to hone your die for a specific brass type. But I like to use just one set of brass for a particular rifle, and I have a set of dies set up for each rifle as well, so this is no great additional burden.

As mentioned above, you can also have dies made to match your chamber. Hornady have made several for me, and I have specified those to be used without an expander. This is particularly useful if the caliber is an "odd-ball" or if factory dies tend to size one part of the brass too much, say. As much as I like Forster dies, their .308 Win have always sized the case body too much for my taste, so custom dies it was for those rifles... ($100+ for a Hornady FL and seater - which I normally pitch to use the Forster).

- mike

quote:

Originally posted by Brazos Jack:
I’ve decided that any new dies I get will be the neck bushing type for eliminating the need for the expander button and improved case neck to body concentricity. But I’ve got almost 40 years worth of conventional dies. Mostly RCBS with Lee, Redding, and Bonanza thrown in.

Does anyone modify conventional dies by reaming the die neck to work with a particular brass neck thickness without an expander button? I’d like to be able to send all of my sizer dies to someone to check them for neck/body concentricity and ream the necks of the concentric ones to work with a supplied sample brass case?

Learn to size your brass so the case fits the chamber better. This will improve your accuracy.
Accuracy is the real goal.
My die inventory mirrors yours but I found that being able to set the FL die EXACTLY made a big difference in accuracy. When the brass is sized to be exactly the same length as the chamber to .001 shorter it improves the fit of the ammo to the chamber.
You could have your dies honed but they may not be straight to begin with.
The 7/8-14 threads may not be straight with the sizing chamber etc etc.

BTW the best accuracy investment that I ever made was a Hart rest and a set of leather Protector bags. It improved the accuracy of every rifle, regardless of the ammo, scope, stock, etc.

Dies with collets in the neck are a nice development, but they are not a panacea. Often, the neck of a chamber will be, shall we say, "generous". A collet system is able to size down brass to about .005" uniformly. For any more than this, you have to size down in multiple steps (traditional dies just squeeze real hard, and then fine tune with the expander ball.

If you have to use two dies, use a neck sizer die first, then finish up with a F/L sizer.

This sounds far fetched, but it is more common than most of us realize. The micrometer does not lie.

German Salazar recently wrote a good article about this on his shooting blog.