Title says it all. It is marked 30-30. All bushings are different calibers. Anybody know who made it and what it is designed to do?

All opinions are welcome.

Thanks in advance.
Doug

Never saw the likes of it before.
The bushings all look like powder drop bushings, but they might be for neck sizing.
Looks like a cross between Lee and some home made tinkerer.
No name on the die body?

Their look reminds me ancient CH dies.

Pretty sure this is an early Herter's Universal Die as advertised in at least the 4th Edition of Handloaders Digest. Your photo matches up with the diagram in the HD.

Sizing and bullet seating accomplished in the same die body using different diameter sizing and seating head inserts. Uses full length sizing plugs specific for the range of common cartridges.

Prices in those golden years were 79c for the sizing heads, 69c for the seating heads and $2.19 for the full length sizing plugs.

Tough to tell from the photo, but the bushings look like the ones in the old Lyman Precision Alignment seating dies to me.. (I have and still use them)

maybe a competitor or early "do it all" clone?

The only actual "reloading" die seen is at the extreme right side of the photo. There is insufficient detail to see what it is for. It could belong to a 2, 3 or 4 die set. And be made by any of numerous manufacturer.

The other items shown are apparently some sort of accessories. The short ones do indeed appear to be "nozzles" for a powder measure. But they look similar to many so they can't be ascribe to a manufacturer without additional information.

The two long ones cannot be called "reloading dies" in the conventional sense, for any known current, or past, center fire rifle cartridge.

Going back to the old days at the debut of reloading, in the mid to late 1800's, during the great bison hunts for hides, Lyman produced the hand reloading tool 310. It was a 3 die set. Calibers were the old 45-70 and such. Those dies are different from the subsequent Lyman True Line Junior press with turret head. Both have finer threads.

Later the Lyman presses came in two forms, a single and a rotating turret head with 6 threaded die stations. The thread size was increased to 7/8 - 14 and virtually all other manufacturers joined in the standard which is interchangeable from one to the other. The die on the extreme right is a 7/8 - 14 which is 7/8 inch diameter 14 threads per inch.

The two long dies are not such a thread. So you have in your photo no less than three different configurations which makes the answer non-responsive. Actually there are at least 3 different thread sizes and a fourth dimension too.It will be helpful it you target, and identify, which you want respondents to address.

If you will give us a little bit more history as to where these came from and what they are presently being used for it may help us to answer in a more beneficial way.

quote:

Originally posted by eagle27:
Pretty sure this is an early Herter's Universal Die as advertised in at least the 4th Edition of Handloaders Digest. Your photo matches up with the diagram in the HD.

Sizing and bullet seating accomplished in the same die body using different diameter sizing and seating head inserts. Uses full length sizing plugs specific for the range of common cartridges.

Prices in those golden years were 79c for the sizing heads, 69c for the seating heads and $2.19 for the full length sizing plugs.

We have a winner!

quote:

Originally posted by Stonecreek:

quote:

Originally posted by eagle27:
Pretty sure this is an early Herter's Universal Die as advertised in at least the 4th Edition of Handloaders Digest. Your photo matches up with the diagram in the HD.

Sizing and bullet seating accomplished in the same die body using different diameter sizing and seating head inserts. Uses full length sizing plugs specific for the range of common cartridges.

Prices in those golden years were 79c for the sizing heads, 69c for the seating heads and $2.19 for the full length sizing plugs.

We have a winner!

What's the prize?

quote:

Originally posted by eagle27:
Pretty sure this is an early Herter's Universal Die as advertised in at least the 4th Edition of Handloaders Digest. Your photo matches up with the diagram in the HD.

Sizing and bullet seating accomplished in the same die body using different diameter sizing and seating head inserts. Uses full length sizing plugs specific for the range of common cartridges.

Prices in those golden years were 79c for the sizing heads, 69c for the seating heads and $2.19 for the full length sizing plugs.

I had sizing plugs for about everything under the sun.....it came from Herter's as suggested.....that said, they were copiers of almost everything they sold.....so it could actually have been from Lyman or other companies

Looks like it was made by RCBS or a copy of an RCBS design.

May be for Herter or Herter copied it.

quote:

Originally posted by p dog shooter:
Looks like it was made by RCBS or a copy of an RCBS design.

May be for Herter or Herter copied it.

Herter's bought quite a few items to me to have prints drawn back in the early '70s. This die style was done some time before I was doing their "reverse engineering" for them.

After that only the .30-30 dies were produced for this universal system so most of these dies were produced before that.....it just wasn't very popular with reloaders.

At one time I was drawing the entire set of drawings from Texan shotshell reloaders and as I was doing that, MEC was suing them for infringement on their shotshell reloader.....Herters was great at stealing the designs of other's and producing them as their own......and of course.....it was a "model perfect".....

Bankrupsy was a just reward for them.....but better yet, George & Co should have spent time behind bars for their practices including illegal importation of endangered species of wildlife.

Vapodog:

That's pretty interesting history.

Can we pursue this further with your kind indulgence ?

I began reloading in 1954 and I too was a big fan and purchaser of Herter.

I have lots of information and I'm just not convinced yet that we have the full story, nor ID, of these dies.

FYI I'm currently schooling my grandson and passing along all of my rather complete and extensive accumulation.

quote:

Can we pursue this further with your kind indulgence ?

Yup....pursue away....Herter's is among myfavorite subjects....

I grewup on a farm in Southern MN and a neighbor had a Cessna and there was an airfield just across the road from Herter's in Waseca. Occasionally he'd pick me up (I was 16 at the time,1962) and take me with him to Herters. I was a gun nut already and loved to fly to Herter's for some shopping and "look-see" I didn't have much cash so Herter's offered me a lot for what little I had.....much of it was serviceable but in those days....as a novice I had very little experience to compare it to.....

Years later I worked for a company that made Herter's products and became their "draftsman" as well as other functions.....as a guy with considerable reloading experience I was the only one there that actually knew what they was making and what it was used for.....I was in second heaven....but what I eventually learned was just how bad things were.....from a legal standpoint.....plagiarism was a Herter's standard....

For a kid in the 60's with very limited money, Herter's was a panacea. Just about everything they offered was around half the price of "name brand" reloading products. Basic die sets were $4.95, while a set of the C&H dies they were copied from cost $9.95. Their knock-off of the Forster case trimmer might have been less than half price, as were things like shellholder heads and deburring tools.

Some of Herter's "own" designs, like their metallic presses, tended to be gawdawful heavy and strong. You can see some following for them on places like ebay where they bring pretty good money these days (if you can afford the shipping!)

In my experience a Herter's Vickerman-style seating die (another knock-off) does as good a job of precision seating as the most expensive unit you can buy.

George Leonard Herter must have been quite a character, entrepreneur, and horse thief. He is said to have been related to the very staid and conservative Christian Herter who was the Republican governor of Massachusetts and Secretary of State under Eisenhower. That must have made for some interesting family dynamics. Did you know that there is a George Leonard Herter Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages...rter/200725996649970 His fame lives on.

I'll take another stab at figuring out what the die's are supposed to do. But first as a disclaimer it is at best some guessing since the dies are not available for examination.

* The big piece on the right is apparently the die body.

* The cylinder next to it is presumed to be an insert.

* The 9 smaller round pieces are different diameters and thus calibers for neck sizing. They probably work on conjunction with the insert.

* The long piece next to the bottom actually looks like some auto primer feed tubes but this one is not. It's more likely to be a bullet seater. It would fit into the large die body on the right.

* The long piece at the bottom looks like a decapping pin to remove spent primers.

Since this was identified as a "universal" die set it does make sense and could deal with 9 calibers.

The supposition that it is a Herter die also seems to be right at the top of probability.

Surprisingly there is a LOT of Herter equipment and accessories on the internet and in various other forums. The variations of press types, models, sizes is really broad. The selections available must have eclipsed the other manufacturer by quite a wide margin.

quote:

Originally posted by wetibbe:
I'll take another stab at figuring out what the die's are supposed to do. But first as a disclaimer it is at best some guessing since the dies are not available for examination.

* The big piece on the right is apparently the die body.

* The cylinder next to it is presumed to be an insert.

* The 9 smaller round pieces are different diameters and thus calibers for neck sizing. They probably work on conjunction with the insert.

* The long piece next to the bottom actually looks like some auto primer feed tubes but this one is not. It's more likely to be a bullet seater. It would fit into the large die body on the right.

* The long piece at the bottom looks like a decapping pin to remove spent primers.

Since this was identified as a "universal" die set it does make sense and could deal with 9 calibers.

The supposition that it is a Herter die also seems to be right at the top of probability.

Surprisingly there is a LOT of Herter equipment and accessories on the internet and in various other forums. The variations of press types, models, sizes is really broad. The selections available must have eclipsed the other manufacturer by quite a wide margin.

I'd say you got it.....

Whether it's a Herters is very much for debate....I know they sold one similar to this but this one just might be Lyman or some historic company.

In order for these parts to be economical, they had to be made by automatic screw machines.....and long parts are very difficult to make with severe accuracy. I suspect this design failed due to quality issues of failure to fit well...and that's just a guess on my part. All in all, I'm not sure economics was served by this design and it fell by the wayside.